America's Best Hospitals
Tomorrow's cures usually are born at the nation's research hospitals. Here's a look at a few breathtaking breakthroughs
Spotting danger. The bright white on the lung in the image at left, from a total body PET (positron emission tomography) scan, is a "hot spot" where cancer cells are multiplying. The cells have picked up the radioactive tracer injected into a patient at Duke University Medical Center. Not all hot spots alarm. Spots in the pelvic area show where the tracer is being excreted, a spot on the left arm where it was injected. But a tiny white spot on the right arm and another one in the upper rib area are more bad news. The tracer is drawn to cancer's unusually active cells, and the image shows that the cancer has spread to the bones.
Heartbreak. Cleveland Clinic surgeons have just removed a slice of living heart that its owner is better off without. Pioneered by Brazilian surgeon Randas Viela Batista, ventricular remodeling--removal of part of the wall of a dangerously enlarged heart--is showing positive results at a handful of U.S. centers. Patrick McCarthy of the Cleveland Clinic's department of thoracic and cardiovascular surgery was among the physicians who went to Brazil to watch the technique and examine Batista's patients--whose survival rate was comparable with those for heart-transplant patients. In patients with congestive heart failure, the surgery can relieve stress and let the heart pump more efficiently. Conceived as a bridge to transplant, the technique works so dramatically in some patients that transplant is no longer necessary.
Staving off pain. Sabriyah King, 8, mixed up her first dose of hydroxyurea when she was only 3. The breakthrough medication can ease the pain that racks many sufferers of sickle cell anemia. Since Sabriyah began taking the drug (which she says tastes like chalk) through Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, she has not had any painful episodes. She is in a study to see whether the drug might reduce complications such as gradual destruction of lung tissue.
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