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NEWS:
Woman Receives Double Lung Transplant After Being Turned Away from Over 20 Hospitals
She was deemed too “high risk” for surgery but the transplant team at UCLA accepted the challenge of treating her.
Miriam Merianos was a healthy woman in her 40s when she got the flu. The virus attacked her lungs and Miriam was placed on a machine called ECMO that worked for her heart and lungs and kept her alive. Her only chance for survival was a double lung transplant, but she was told she was too high-risk for surgery. However, her family was not willing to take “no” for an answer.
“We knew we had to find a hospital that was willing to take my mom’s complicated case because she wanted to live and be there for her three children. Knowing that made our voice stronger for her,” said Miriam’s daughter, Elaine Kramer.
After being rejected by more than 20 transplant programs, they turned to Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, where Dr. Abbas Ardehali reviewed Miriam’s case and accepted h
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Study Shows Reduced Risk Of Pediatric Emergency Department COVID-19 Infection
Asymptomatic healthcare professionals who work in pediatric emergency department in a community with a low prevalence of COVID-19 and who undergo daily health screenings are not likely to be carriers of the virus, according to a new study from CHOC Children's.
Findings of the study, one of the first of its kind and conducted during California's projected peak of coronavirus-related use of hospital resources, shine an encouraging light on a topic where there are currently limited data available.
CHOC's study tested patient-facing staff at its Julia and George Argyros Emergency Department during a two-week period in April 2020, using a Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test for COVID-19 viral RNA. Subjects were asymptomatic and had no fever, as all employees undergo daily pre-shift health and temperature screenings prior to entering the hospital. Testing found just one of 145 subjects was p
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Dr. James Lynch is the First US Private Practice Surgeon to Use Augmented Reality Spine Surgical Guidance at a Community Hospital
Spine Nevada Minimally Invasive Spine Institute announced that Dr. James Lynch, a board-certified and fellowship-trained neurological surgeon, was the first private practice surgeon in the United States to use the Augmedics xvision Spine System at a community hospital. xvision is the first Augmented Reality Guidance system to be used in surgery. It allows surgeons to visualize the 3D spinal anatomy of a patient during surgery as if they have "x-ray vision," and to accurately navigate instruments and implants while looking directly at the patient, instead of a remote screen. The xvision Spine System uniquely builds and improves upon existing surgical navigation systems to meet the surgeons' needs and provide technical confidence in the operating room.
Dr. Lynch performed a posterior fusion using xvision as part of a 360 fusion back up of Lattus / 4Web lateral fusion at Renown Regional Me
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Virtual Nurses Make a Real Difference
Barred from the medical campus because of the COVID-19 pandemic, a group of soon-to-be-graduates in UCI’s Sue & Bill Gross School of Nursing found a way to make their last several weeks as students especially meaningful – not just for themselves, but also for dozens of patients who were prevented from having company.
Every day since May 4 up to their final hours before commencement on June 13, the mix of about 45 undergraduate and graduate students took turns virtually visiting individuals hospitalized for reasons unrelated to the coronavirus.
With staff too busy to devote the time they wished they could to talking with all their patients, the nursing students made a big difference in lifting the spirits of scores of people in seven different units of UCI Medical Center.
Using iPads provided by the hospital, patients signed into Zoom sessions and chatted with nursing students worki
