Dr. Sanjay Gupta shows how people in La Oroya, Peru, try to reduce exposure to arsenic, lead and other heavy metals thrown off by an American-owned smelter. Health and environmental groups have filed a petition urging the Peruvian government take urgent action to protect people from illnesses and death.

Editor’s Note: Medical news is a popular but sensitive subject rooted in science. We receive many comments on this blog each day; not all are posted. Our hope is that much will be learned from the sharing of useful information and personal experiences based on the medical and health topics of the blog. We encourage you to focus your comments on those medical and health topics and we appreciate your input. Thank you for your participation.

While on assignment in the mountains of Peru, Dr. Sanjay Gupta experienced the dangers of altitude sickness firsthand. After ten minutes of pure oxygen treatments, he felt much better and returned to work reporting on a dangerous public health threat in a nearby village.

Editor’s Note: Medical news is a popular but sensitive subject rooted in science. We receive many comments on this blog each day; not all are posted. Our hope is that much will be learned from the sharing of useful information and personal experiences based on the medical and health topics of the blog. We encourage you to focus your comments on those medical and health topics and we appreciate your input. Thank you for your participation.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta takes us into a small village near Lima, Peru hospital where tuberculosis is running rampant.

Editor’s Note: Medical news is a popular but sensitive subject rooted in science. We receive many comments on this blog each day; not all are posted. Our hope is that much will be learned from the sharing of useful information and personal experiences based on the medical and health topics of the blog. We encourage you to focus your comments on those medical and health topics and we appreciate your input. Thank you for your participation.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta takes us into the tuberculosis ward of a Lima, Peru hospital. Donning a mask, he shows us patients who are masked and hospitalized to contain infection. He also shows us x-rays of a TB infected person.

Editor’s Note: Medical news is a popular but sensitive subject rooted in science. We receive many comments on this blog each day; not all are posted. Our hope is that much will be learned from the sharing of useful information and personal experiences based on the medical and health topics of the blog. We encourage you to focus your comments on those medical and health topics and we appreciate your input. Thank you for your participation.

By Dr. Sanjay Gupta
Chief Medical Correspondent

Three years ago, I covered Hurricane Katrina. At the time the hurricane made land fall, I was attending a family funeral in Denver. Like many people I watched the reports on television and heard the hospitals had been evacuated. At the same time, however, doctors from Charity hospital were emailing on their dwindling blackberries telling me they were still caring for around 200 patients and they had lost their emergency generator power and were without adequate food and water.

After checking with my wife and kissing my 3 month old daughter good bye, I caught the first flight to Baton Rouge and then a helicopter to the parking deck next to Charity. As a physician, I couldn’t believe my eyes. There were patients as far as my eyes could see on the parking deck. They had been brought by boat across flooded streets, most of the water above my head. They were then carried on stretchers and backboards up 8 flights of stairs to wait in the oppressive southern August heat. For those with breathing tubes, diligent nurses sat there pumping air into the patient’s lungs. Second after second they pumped, for hours, even a full day on end.

So many mistakes were made. The generators failed because they were in the basement and malfunctioned at the first sign of flooding. The attempt at evacuations came too late, and patients were stuck in awful conditions. There is no question, with better planning, some hospital patients who died after Katrina could’ve lived.

Over the past days, I have toured many of the hospitals here in New Orleans in advance of Gustav. One thing is immediately clear. Things are going to be different this time. While in medicine, we can never be over prepared – many of these hospitals seem to be setting a new standard with regard to preparation. Most of the evacuations were done well in advance, with ambulances from several states parked outside Tulane hospital. At East Jefferson in Metairie, decisions were made several days ago to keep the hospital open but to evacuate several tiny babies from the neonatal ICU. Generators are now located in water tight compartments and the hospitals themselves have been fortified with seemingly indestructible steel beams. In the typical ambulance bay, there are now seven ton rescue trucks designed to handle flood waters and street debris. Today, the hospitals may be the safest buildings in all of New Orleans.

During a storm, a hospital is like any other place. With limited communication and running on emergency power, dozens of doctors and nurses hunker down and stand by. They know their calls will likely come in the hours and days after the storm passes. We will be here with them.

My daughter is now 3 years old. Along with her 19 month old sister, they have been sitting with their mom and watching the hurricane. “Oooh, daddy. Stay dry. Lots of rain and wind,” was the message I just received on my cell phone. Many here in New Orleans are hoping that’s all there is.

Editor’s Note: Medical news is a popular but sensitive subject rooted in science. We receive many comments on this blog each day; not all are posted. Our hope is that much will be learned from the sharing of useful information and personal experiences based on the medical and health topics of the blog. We encourage you to focus your comments on those medical and health topics and we appreciate your input. Thank you for your participation.

By Dr. Sanjay Gupta
CNN Chief Medical Correspondent

Every year in the United States, there are around 200,000 ACL injuries a year. As you might guess, they are most common in soccer, football and basketball. So, when you heard about Tiger Woods golf injury, you may have been a little surprised. In fact, he has had four knee operations since 1994, with the most serious one being on June 24th of this year. As you watch this video, pay close attention to the left knee and the amount of torque that is placed on it. There is a pivot like motion that orthopedic surgeons seem to believe caused the problem.

The operation itself is a fairly straightforward one but now the name of Tiger’s game is rehab.

Woods tell us in his blog that he is more mobile than a month ago, and that he spends most of his rehab time riding a stationary bike. It sounds like he would look a lot different as well. He says he has lost 10 pounds of muscle and is mainly eating a raw and organic diet. The kicker is that he is not even planning on swinging a golf club until next year. That’s quite a change of lifestyle for someone who has played golf for almost his whole life.

When Tiger does come back, he may have a different swing than the one he has now. He may not be able to generate the same amount of force and may not have the same pivot that we are so accustomed to seeing. If you had to assign a number to it, between 82 -95% of athletes do make a recovery. (watch my report)

Have you ever had knee surgery, arthroscopic or a ligament repair? What was the most challenging part of rehabilitation? Did you ever get back to full function?

Editor’s Note: Medical news is a popular but sensitive subject rooted in science. We receive many comments on this blog each day; not all are posted. Our hope is that much will be learned from the sharing of useful information and personal experiences based on the medical and health topics of the blog. We encourage you to focus your comments on those medical and health topics and we appreciate your input. Thank you for your participation.

By Dr. Sanjay Gupta
Chief Medical Correspondent

With the Olympics coming up, there is a lot of concern surrounding the pollution. As the athletes have started to arrive, many of them are wearing masks. They say it is to protect themselves, whereas some in the Chinese government say it is only to be insulting.

Here are a few things to consider. According to a new study out of Northwestern University, the level of particulate matter in the air in Chicago is 20 micrograms/m3. That probably means nothing to you, other than telling you the average level of pollution of a big U.S. city. Here is what caught my eye. The level of particulate matter in Beijing: 260 micrograms/m3 — 13 times as much as Chicago. (See Study)

It is well known that high levels of particulate matter can cause inflammation in the lungs, and that a protein called Interleukin 6 is released in response. The end result may be that your blood gets a little stickier and thicker. That can cause problems such as heart attacks or strokes, especially in those with a pre-existing history.

Keep in mind when an athlete is in the throes of competition, they take in more than 100 liters of air a minute as compared to a spectator at rest, who takes in an average of 6 liters a minute. Regardless, anybody who is not used to that level of pollution is going to notice it. I was in Beijing not that long ago, (Watch Video) and I could taste those particles, smell it and feel it in the back of my throat. 

As things stand now, Beijing has taken half the cars off the road with a system of odd and even license plates. They have shut down four out of five giant furnaces in the city for the time being.

Today, we learned the athletes apologized for wearing the masks.  What do you think? Is this a real concern? Would you wear a mask during the Olympics as an athlete or even as a spectator?

Editor’s Note: Medical news is a popular but sensitive subject rooted in science. We receive many comments on this blog each day; not all are posted. Our hope is that much will be learned from the sharing of useful information and personal experiences based on the medical and health topics of the blog. We encourage you to focus your comments on those medical and health topics and we appreciate your input. Thank you for your participation.

By Dr. Sanjay Gupta
CNN Chief Medical Correspondent

It’s a curse. It is something I have dealt with as far back as I can remember. And, now I even see it in my 16-month-old daughter. In fact, I was the first to diagnose the reason she absolutely hates riding in her car seat for long rides. Like me, she has what doctors will call a mismatch of her sensory system. Others know it as motion sickness. Awful motion sickness. My first clue was that the video player we thought might help, really made things worse. Have her look out the window and even suck on a little ginger, and she is a new baby. 

You may know the feeling. Your heart starts to race, you feel queasy and you start to sweat. It is one of the worst things, and it is often hard to get any relief. The problem is that there is a mismatch between your eyes and your inner ear. If you are in a car, your ear knows you are moving, but unless your eyes are being given constant inputs that confirm that movement, the process of feeling “out of sorts” starts to occur. If you happen to be looking down and reading a book or turning around and looking into the back seat to soothe an upset baby, it gets even worse. For my daughter, looking at a stationary movie picture while her ears are telling us we are barreling down the freeway at 70 miles an hour proves to be just too much.  (Watch Video)

The treatments are fairly simple. Always look outside and into the distance preferably. Use antihistamines to prevent and treat nausea, vomiting and dizziness. Ginger and soda can both help settle things down. Simply opening up the window and getting fresh air can help as well. Always sit in the front seat if you can. Even better, drive the car. That will be your best shot at eliminating a mismatch altogether.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta flying with the Blue Angels

For my job as a reporter, this curse of mine often proves to be one of the biggest obstacles. Whether it is a taxi ride in rush hour, a jeep ride through a jungle in Congo or a boat ride along the Carterets islands in the south pacific, what you hardly ever see on camera is what goes on behind the scenes – and for me, it is not always pleasant. I even took a ride on a Blue Angel Fighter jet for a story about flight physiology (click here to see my mismatch at work). For me, that was almost worse than being in a war zone.

I am curious if you have motion sickness? More importantly, what works for you or your children?

Editor’s Note: Medical news is a popular but sensitive subject rooted in science. We receive many comments on this blog each day; not all are posted. Our hope is that much will be learned from the sharing of useful information and personal experiences based on the medical and health topics of the blog. We encourage you to focus your comments on those medical and health topics and we appreciate your input. Thank you for your participation.

By Dr. Sanjay Gupta
CNN Chief Medical Correspondent

We now know Sen. Ted Kennedy flew down to Durham, North Carolina, over the weekend, and underwent awake brain surgery at 9 Monday morning at Duke. The operation was “successful,” according to his surgeons, and a significant amount of his malignant glioma was removed. The whole thing was a bit of a surprise given that his doctors at Massachusetts General Hospital hadn’t publicly raised the possibility of an operation. They mentioned only chemotherapy and radiation as his options. Clearly, over the last couple of weeks, the senator and his family decided they wanted more. They wanted to fight this tumor, and they talked to experts all over the country and finally decided on Dr. Allan Friedman at the Preston Robert Tisch Brain Tumor Center at Duke to help them in his battle.

So, what sort of things go into that decision making process?

Well, for starters, Duke is a highly regarded brain tumor hospital. The chief of neurosurgery has been at Duke for over three decades and removes around 90 percent of the brain tumors at that hospital. Its staff members,  along with those of several other hospitals, are regarded as experts in what is known as brain “mapping.” Even as a neurosurgeon,  I find mapping to be a truly wondrous advancement.  As the patient, in this case the senator, lies awake on the table with his head immobilized, the doctors probe various areas of the brain with a device that looks like a small fork. Carefully, they “map” out the areas of his brain responsible for things like speech. While they are probing with a slight electrical current, if the patient suddenly has trouble raising his hand or identifying an object, the doctors know to stay away from that area – even if tumor is present. The risks would outweigh the rewards. First do no harm.

Kennedy may have ended up at Duke simply because he really liked the doctors and felt comfortable in their hands – attitude, such an important thing for a patient. He may have gone to Duke because he thought they were the “best.” Finally, it could also be because of a vaccine clinical trial that is going on there. Just today, researchers at Duke reported on a small study that found that a cancer vaccine could double the survival time of people with one of the deadliest brain tumors, from around 14 1/2 months to 33 months.
 
The surgery Kennedy had today will most likely be covered by his health plan because removing the tumor is an approved treatment, even though he left his network of doctors in Boston to travel to Durham.  According to the NIH, health insurance and managed care providers often do not cover the patient care costs associated with clinical trials, if that is the route he decides to go.

All of this got me to thinking: how does the average person make these decisions? How do they decide where they are going to get treated and is it even possible for most to find the “best” in the country? I’m eager to hear your experiences and any tips you might have for fellow bloggers and patients.

Editor’s Note: Medical news is a popular but sensitive subject rooted in science. We receive many comments on this blog each day; not all are posted. Our hope is that much will be learned from the sharing of useful information and personal experiences based on the medical and health topics of the blog. We encourage you to focus your comments on those medical and health topics and we appreciate your input. Thank you for your participation.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta, while on assignment in Peru toured a local market to witness the effects of a looming food crisis.

Editor’s Note: Medical news is a popular but sensitive subject rooted in science. We receive many comments on this blog each day; not all are posted. Our hope is that much will be learned from the sharing of useful information and personal experiences based on the medical and health topics of the blog. We encourage you to focus your comments on those medical and health topics and we appreciate your input. Thank you for your participation.