By Miriam Falco
CNN Medical Managing Editor

A German hospital announced this week that a 42-year old American living in Berlin who did not want to be identified had come to them three years ago for treatment. It was determined that he had acute leukemia (blood cancer) and was HIV positive too.

After a bone marrow transplant, it appears that not only did the man’s cancer go away, so did the virus that causes AIDS.  This has been reported worldwide as a “cure” for AIDS. But even the doctors involved in this case say they don’t know if they cured this man of HIV.  So what’s all the fuss about? Should HIV patients be treated with a bone marrow transplant?

One of America’s top AIDS expert doesn’t think so. “This is interesting but not a practical application. It’s not feasible and has extraordinarily limited practical application” long-time AIDS researcher and Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Dr. Anthony Fauci told CNN.  He and other researchers first learned of this case back in February. But this study of one patient has not yet been published or been reviewed by other AIDS experts. It didn’t get much attention back then because of the many limitations it has.  Dr. Robert Gallo is one of the scientists who discovered HIV. “While this procedure might help a very small minority of people living with AIDS,” Gallo says, “it is by no means the answer to the world’s HIV/AIDS pandemic.”

Doctors first began treating the cancer with chemotherapy. They also gave him anti-retrovirals to contain the virus that causes AIDS. Doctors said at a press conference this week that the patient did go into remission, but eventually the cancer came back. The next step to treat the cancer was a bone marrow transplant, which is common for leukemia patients.

His doctors emphasized that without further treatment, without the bone marrow transplant, he would have died of cancer - not HIV or AIDS.

But the patient’s physician, Dr. Gero Huetter, wanted to combine the cancer treatment with something he had heard about in medical school 12 years ago. That’s when researchers found out that a certain genetic mutation prevents the virus from getting into a person’s cells. But to be resistant to HIV, one has to have inherited this mutation from both parents.

So when it came to looking for a bone marrow donor for his patient, Huetter decided to see if he could find a donor that not only was a marrow match for his patient, but one who also had these two copies of the genetic mutation to see if they would get the bonus of treating the HIV, while treating the more urgent need - cancer.

Here’s where the German doctors admit they were very lucky. They told reporters they normally find one to five qualified donors for their patients in need of a transplant. In this case they found 80 donors. So they systematically tested each donor for the mutation and when they came to the 61st potential donor they hit the jackpot. Nearly two years after the bone marrow transplant, the patient is still in remission from his cancer and he doesn’t seem to have any detectable HIV either.

This is probably why many newspaper headlines interpreted the success as being a cure.

However there are many caveats to this story.

1. Even though their tests do not show a presence of HIV in his system, doesn’t mean it’s not there. This virus is known for hiding well and popping up later. It’s been seen before in patients taking anti-retroviral drugs. It is possible that if more sophisticated tests were used on this patient, they would detect the virus that is still in his body. So it’s still not entirely clear that he is HIV-free.

2. The chances of finding a bone marrow donor with two copies of this genetic mutation for everyone one of the 33 million people worldwide living with HIV or AIDS is not realistic because only one percent of Caucasians and zero percent of African Americans or Asians have this particular genetic mutation.

3. Bone marrow transplants are dangerous for patients. Before they can get the donated stem cells that will replace their own, they have to take strong chemotherapy to destroy their own bone marrow — leaving them without an immune system to fight off any disease — until the transplanted bone marrow can make new blood cells. Plus patients run the risk of rejecting the new cells, which means they have to take immune-suppressing drugs for the rest of their life.

4. Bone marrow transplants are very expensive and not an option for many people living with this disease around the world.

Both the doctors in Berlin and AIDS experts we’ve spoken with say this is a “proof of principle.” “It’s an interesting case for researchers,” according to Dr. Rudolf Tauber, from the Charite hospital in Berlin, where the patient was treated. The hope is that this one case could lead to future treatments. Dr. Gallo says, “If patients living with HIV and AIDS have access and can adhere to today’s retroviral therapy, many will live longer, healthier lives, perhaps full length lives.”

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 Miriam Falco
Managing Editor, CNN Medical News

Last night, the Obama-Biden campaign announced that reporters would be allowed Monday to review Sen. Joe Biden’s medical records. So beginning at 12:30 p.m. today, reporters have five hours to look at a 49-page summary of the Democratic vice-presidential candidate’s medical records.

Since Biden has had two aneurysms– found after his first bid for president 20 years ago — some might wonder how healthy this 65-year-old man really is.

The campaign didn’t give the news media much of a heads-up – less than 24 hours. Earlier this year, selected journalists, including our Dr. Sanjay Gupta, were given three hours to look at over 1,000 of pages of Sen. John McCain’s medical records, far more than most candidates running for this office. Biden’s running mate, Sen. Barack Obama, released only a one-page document by his physician, which pronounced Obama healthy to be president and noted that he used to smoke a lot. So far there hasn’t been any mention of McCain’s running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin, releasing her medical records.

How important is to you it that presidential and vice presidential candidates make their medical history public? Does it influence your vote?

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 Miriam Falco
CNN Medical Managing Editor

Every year, we report on who should get a flu shot: the elderly; those over 50; children age 6 months to 5 years old; pregnant women; people with chronic disease.

But apparently the message isn’t getting through about pregnant women.

Both the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists recommend that women who will be pregnant during the flu season, which runs from October to May, get a flu shot.

However, a new poll commissioned by the non-profit National Women’s Health Resource Center found that only 25 percent were aware of these recommendations and only 20 percent agreed that getting a flu shot while pregnant is important.

The latest data from the a CDC health survey show that less than 14 percent of pregnant women between ages 18 and 44 actually got a flu shot during the 2006/2007 flu season.

Flu kills an average of 36,000 people and leads to hundreds of thousands of hospitalizations each year, according to the CDC.

An informal (and very unscientific) survey of my own found that some women weren’t aware that young women who happened to be pregnant fall in the high-risk category. Others who already had children didn’t think it was safe to get a flu shot during pregnancy.

So how bad can it be if you get the flu during or right after pregnancy? Very bad, according to mother of four Lisa Madden. Three months after giving birth to triplets, “”for the first time in my life I got the flu,” she said. “I was the sickest I ever was in my life.”

She was laid up in bed for 10 days, her mother and mother-in-law had to come in to help care for the babies, and even her husband had to take off work because she was so sick.

“That was the year I learned my lesson” (about not getting a flu shot), she said. She now preaches the vaccination’s importance.

Dr. Carolyn Bridges, the CDC’s flu expert, said that complications of the flu in pregnant women can be the same as in other people — pneumonia, dehydration, hospitalization. But the flu can also lead to pre-term labor, fetal demise and worsening respiratory function.

There may be other reasons that pregnant women don’t get a flu shot. Only 51 percent of women who participated in this new poll thought it was safe to get a flu shot during pregnancy. Dr. Jeanne Santoli, deputy director of the CDC’s Immunizations Services Division, said that flu shots are safe at any time during pregnancy — during all three trimesters.

Even though ACOG and the CDC say flu shots are safe; some women are concerned about the preservative thimerosal in flu shots. If that’s the case, women can request a preservative-free flu shot. It may cost a little more.

Convenience is another thing. Although many OB-GYNs may recommend that a pregnant woman get a flu shot, they may not offer it in their practice. Having to go somewhere else may contribute to not getting one. It’s inconvenient, you forget, you just don’t get around to it.

Some women just may not be aware of how serious the complications can be for Mom or baby.

Soon-to-be first-time mom Virginia Bader is seven and a half months pregnant. She credits spending a lot of time with her elderly grandmother for being aware of those at high-risk for complications of the flu. “It occurred to me that I was in a high-risk category myself,” she said. She asked her doctor two months ago about getting a flu shot. It was too early then, but she said, “I will be getting it soon now.”

“You don’t have a lot of control over many things when you’re pregnant; this is something you can take control of.”

Are you pregnant or have a new baby? Are you planning on getting a flu shot during this flu season?

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 Miriam Falco
CNN Medical Managing Editor

When my sister was about 15, she went on a diet that called for eating a lot of eggs.  I distinctly remember her coming home from the doctor and telling me she had the cholesterol level of a 50-year-old and had been told to eat a more balanced diet.

Things have changed since then.   When I was in school (back in the Dark Ages), there were maybe a couple of fat kids in my class.  Chubby kids are much more the norm nowadays.  According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, over 17 percent of our nation’s children are either overweight or obese.

Seeing children with adult health problems is much more likely than in it was 20 years ago.  Today, new guidelines from the American Academy of Pediatrics seek to bring “a new urgency given the current epidemic of childhood obesity” because children are now at increased risk for type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease – conditions adults used to get more regularly in their 50s.

This new AAP report says children 2 and older should get their cholesterol tested if they have a family history of heart disease or cholesterol problems (too much “bad” cholesterol and too little “good” cholesterol).

Children without a family history, but have other risk factors, such as being overweight or obese, have high blood pressure, are diabetic or smoke, should also be screened.  For more details on the report, go here.

What caught my eye is that that the AAP is suggesting patients as young as age 8 could be given cholesterol-lowering drugs.   This may seems shocking, but to be fair, the AAP is talking about children with LDL (“bad” cholesterol) levels at 190 or higher or over 160 if they have a family history of heart disease.  The goal is to get the bad cholesterol under 160.  Adults are supposed to keep their entire cholesterol levels under 200.

Dr. Nicolas Stettler, an assistant professor of pediatrics at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia helped develop these new AAP guidelines.  He says studies have shown that statins are safe for children.  He also says, although the number of children genetically predisposed to having high cholesterol is still relatively small, it’s not rare.  Stettler points out that not every child with the genetic makeup that leads to high cholesterol is obese.  But if cholesterol screening shows a child has high levels of cholesterol and six months of lifestyle and diet changes can bring those numbers down, adding a statin is recommended.  “It’s not a simple decision and a lifetime commitment.”

Dr. Jackie Gotlieb, a spokesperson for “Kids Health First” - an alliance of 183 primary care pediatricians in 34 independent pediatric in Metro Atlanta called the new guidelines “very reasonable recommendations.”  

“These are recommendation pediatricians can live with.   Although side effects such as elevated liver enzymes and muscle problems can happen in children as well as adults, this is also something doctors can easily keep an eye on.”   

Has your child been screened for high cholesterol?  How would you feel if your child needs to take a cholesterol-lowering drug?

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 Miriam Falco
CNN Medical Managing Editor

You may have heard the news yesterday, that New York City wants everyone in the Bronx tested for HIV (read story).
Sounds like an ambitious project. The New York City Health Department says they are launching their largest ever HIV testing program today. They want every resident of the Bronx — ages 18 to 64 — to know if they do or do not have HIV. They hope that over the next three years, the 250,000 adults living in the Bronx who’ve never been tested will know if they’ve been infected with the virus that causes AIDS.

But this is not a local New York effort. It’s part of a nationwide campaign. Today is “National HIV Testing Day.” The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates nearly 40 percent of those infected with HIV don’t find out until they’re already sick with AIDS. The CDC also reports that more than a million people were living with HIV/AIDS in the United States in 2003. What’s really striking is that they say about 1 in 4 of those didn’t know they were infected.

Knowing you’ve been infected with HIV as early as possible is key to living longer. Here’s how the CDC’s Director of the National Center for HIV/AIDS put it: “If you are infected, you can take steps to protect your health and that of your partners as well as seek life-extending medical treatment. People who learn they are not infected can take steps to help ensure they remain uninfected.”

Preventing HIV transmission, by avoiding risky behavior (i.e. having unprotected sex or sharing needles), is of course the primary goal of public health officials. But on this 16th “National HIV Testing Day” it’s clear that knowing your HIV status is critical too.

If you are wondering where you can get an HIV test, you can find a testing site by clicking on www.hivtest.org. I did and found there are 23 sites within a ten mile radius of CNN.

Advocates would like to see HIV testing as part of everyone’s routine health check-up. Have you been recently tested for HIV? Do you think it should be part of your regular medical check-up?

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 Miriam Falco
CNN Medical Managing Editor

I’ve always looked forward to Father’s Day. Over the past decade I have tried to make it a little more special by making the trip from Georgia to Pennsylvania to see my dad because he’d been living alone since my mother passed away at the end of 1999. This year I’m once again spending Father’s Day in Pennsylvania. But it’s most likely the last time. My father passed away a month ago; we’re having his memorial service today.

Over the past couple of years, my father didn’t want to travel any more - not to Germany, where I grew up - not even down to Atlanta, where the winters are milder than in the Northeast. At first he said it was the fact that he couldn’t smoke anywhere anymore, an inconvenience he didn’t want to put up with. Then he was experiencing some discomforts, which could have, and even were, mistaken by him and by me - his daughter, the medical producer - for something benign that would probably go away.

Then, my dad just seemed to be getting a little less interested in things he used to enjoy. I thought it was a little bit of depression because he missed my mom - the best diagnosis I could offer from my conversations over the phone. Then, over the past year, his symptoms not only persisted, they became worse. Dad refused to go to a doctor. He didn’t trust them, despite the fact that I, in my years as a medical producer, had encountered some of the best doctors in many fields. He probably had some good reasons for not trusting doctors. When Mom was battling lung cancer, we were disappointed with her care.

So dad didn’t go to the doctor until my husband brought him to Atlanta in April. I told him the only way he could get strong medication — for what I now know must have been excruciating pain — was by getting prescription drugs. Those could come only from seeing a physician. Less than a week later, we learned that Dad had metastatic colon cancer. He died five days later.

Had he gone to see a doctor on a regular basis, or had he gotten a screening colonoscopy at 50 or even 60, this may have been prevented. Had he gone to a doctor over the past two years when he was experiencing more severe symptoms, he may have had a fighting chance to beat the cancer. According to the American Cancer Society and many other medical associations, colon cancer is one of the most preventable types of cancer.

My dad was a very smart man. But when it came to managing his health, something else was stronger - call it fear or cynicism. I don’t really know. But I’m left with a lot of “what if’s?” It’s not comforting to know my dad was like many other men, as my collegues have already reported this week.  (CNN Medical Correspondent Elizabeth Cohen’s report can be found here; CNN Medical Correspondent Judy Fortin’s report can be found here)  My husband says “I don’t want to go to the doctor — they’re just going to find something wrong.”

Why do you - if you’re a man reading this - not go to the doctor? What may compel you to seek medical care if you think something’s wrong?

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 Miriam Falco
CNN Medical Managing Editor

You may not know it, but the first-ever high level meeting on HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis is underway at the United Nations right now. The former president of Portugal and UN Secretary General’s Special Envoy to Stop TB, Dr. Jorge Sampaio, told reporters yesterday that the “meeting was convened to draw the attention of the world to a much neglected topic” - how TB is affecting HIV/AIDS patients and vice versa.

People living with HIV/AIDS cannot be cured, but they can live longer, with the help of antiretroviral drugs. Thanks to generous donations from the Global Fund,  UNAIDS, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the U.S. PEPFAR plan - the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, even people in the poorest countries are gaining access to these life-saving drugs.

The Global Fund even documented some intriguing stories of people being pulled from the brink of death by taking anti-retroviral drugs in a collection of photographs taken by some of the world’s best photographers. These pictures and stories go on display at the Mellon Library in Washington DC tomorrow, June 11th.  You can see a special preview here.

However, too many HIV/AIDS patients aren’t living long enough to reap the benefits of antiretrovirals because they’ve dying of TB first. The World Health Organization says an estimated one third of people living with HIV or AIDS also are infected with TB. If you’re one of those people, you’re up to 50 times more likely to develop TB than non-HIV infected people and the WHO says TB kills up to half of all AIDS patients worldwide.

The statistics for TB around the world are quite startling. According to the latest figures from the CDC, approxiamately 2 billion people, or one third of the worlds population carry the bacteria that causes tuberculosis — that doesn’t mean they have active TB, but they could develop it.

The WHO says “HIV is the most potent risk factor for converting latent TB into active TB, while TB bacteria accelerates the progress of AIDS infection in the patient.” Dr. Jim Reichman from the New Jersey Medical School Global Tuberculosis Institute puts it another way: “TB accelerates AIDS and AIDS accelerates TB.”

The CDC also says 16 percent of TB cases among 25-44 year-olds in the United States in 2005 were occuring in HIV infected people.

So you may not have HIV or AIDS or TB for that matter and may not live in a poor country with fewer resources to control these diseases. But, as we all learned a year ago in the Andrew Speaker case, we may be just a vacation away or a a plane trip away from coming in contact with someone carrying TB. Speaker, you may recall, is the Atlanta lawyer who contracted TB while traveling in Asia and later flew to and from Europe, knowing he had multi-drug resistant tuberculosis.

“TB is preventable and curable and it’s been so for decades” says Dr. Reichmann. This is why health officials are trying to convince the global leaders gathering at the U.N. today, to encourage countries around the world to invest more in TB prevention and treatment. To paraphrase many TB & AIDS experts, to control TB anywhere, you have to control it everywhere. But so far there’s no big celebrity sponsored campaign to raise a lot of money for eradicating TB. That’s why Dr. Marcos Espinal, Executive Secretary of the Stop TB Partnership told reporters yesterday, “what’s highly needed is a global plan for TB and that countries embrace the plan” in order to stop the spread of HIV and TB.

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 Miriam Falco
CNN Medical Managing Editor

There’s been a lot of news about cancer this week.  Specifically, one of the deadliest, brain cancer.  Sen. Ted Kennedy is fighting it.  Fashion icon Yves Saint Laurent died after battling it for a year.  This news overshadowed some important advances in cancer research presented at the largest cancer conference in the world.  Every year physicians, researchers, pharmaceutical companies and journalists gather for the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncologists (ASCO). This year more than 33,000 people attended the 44th annual conference.  There’s always an expectation of a big, blockbuster report that will make a huge impact on cancer patients. 

This year researchers presented more than 5,000 studies — some small or preliminary, others significantly advancing patient care.  ASCO president and breast cancer specialist Dr. Nancy Davidson points out that, “Today, there are more than 10 million cancer survivors (in the United States) compared to 3 million in the 1970s.”

Here’s a brief round-up (in no particular order) of some of the findings that caught my eye at this year’s conference:

 -      A drug approved for osteoporosis called Zometa not only helped reduce bone loss in premenopausal breast cancer survivors, it also helped reduce the risk of relapse by a third.  It’s too early to say whether these women will live longer, but researchers saw these benefits without going on chemotherapy.

-       Doctors can use a test that costs about $100 to determine whether the drug Erbitux will help prevent the spread of colon cancer.  Researchers found Erbitiux did not work with tumor cells that have a mutated form of a certain protein.  However, if the patient’s tumor had a normal version of the protein, taking Erbitux plus regular chemotherapy reduced his or her risk of recurring cancer by 32 percent.

This is important because  it helps doctors determine who will benefit from this drug.  It saves patients from wasting time on a drug that won’t work for them, avoids their dealing with any side effects that can occur and saves a lot of money because this relative new drug is very expensive ($8,000 for 4 dosages; patients usually need 12). 

-       Researchers also found that adding this same colon cancer drug Erbitux to standard chemotherapy in non-small cell lung cancer patients, compared with those on only standard chemotherapy extends survival by a month.  One month more may not seem like a lot, and the researchers themselves call it “a small step forward that opens up new avenues in research.”  But it shows that this drug, which targets a specific characteristic of the tumor, has a survival benefit. That’s important to patients and their families and represents another step forward in treating the No. 1 cancer killer in the world.

This is not a comprehensive synopsis of the meeting, and several experts I spoke with wouldn’t call these “home run” findings – more like somewhere between a single and a double (their analogy, not mine).  But researchers are learning more about what’s going on inside a tumor and finding ways to stop cancer from spreading.  That’s good news for the more than 1.4 million Americans who will develop cancer this year.  But fighting cancer depends on having the resources to conduct more research.  Another theme of this conference was lack of research dollars.  Davidson, the oncology group’s president, says National Institutes of Health funding declined by $500 million since 2003.  The National Cancer Institute’s director Dr. John Niederhuber told reporters, “We’re supporting fewer clinical trials.”

That’s because the NIH budget has been flat since 2004 – add in inflation – and the actual money is less. Less money means less research.  Do you think the U.S. government needs to spend more on cancer research?  If so, at what cost to other health initiatives?

For more information on these studies and information on cancer, you can go to ASCO’s newly launched website http://www.cancer.net.  The American Cancer Society, at www.cancer.org, also has a lot helpful information for you. 

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 Miriam Falco
CNN Medical Managing Editor

How crowded is your neighborhood emergency room and could it handle the aftermath of a terrorist act? That’s been the topic of two hearings on Capitol Hill this week. On Monday we learned that lawmakers had surveyed hospitals in seven cities (New York; Washington, D.C.; Los Angeles, California; Chicago, Illinois; Houston, Texas; Denver, Colorado; and Minneapolis, Minnesota) to see whether their emergency departments would be able to handle the flood of injures after a conventional terrorist attack, such as the subway bombing in Madrid, Spain, four years ago, which killed almost 200 people and injured more than 2,000.

Of the 34 hospitals surveyed on March 25 (a randomly chosen date, according to the House Committee), more than half of the hospitals said their ERs were already above capacity and only five had available beds in their intensive care units. Washington and LA hospitals were in particularly bad shape in terms of capacity.

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, chaired by Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman, commissioned the survey and held these hearings because new Medicaid regulations are taking effect as early as May 26, which will cut tens of billions of federal dollars to public and teaching hospitals nationwide.

Today, Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff were grilled by the same committee.

Asked if they thought the nations’ level 1 trauma hospitals had the capacity to deal with such a terrorist attack, Chertoff said he did, and Leavitt said repeatedly that even though some hospitals were not able to handle a terrorist threat, Medicaid dollars are not the solution. “The job of Medicaid is to take care of people who are poor, or indigent, or disabled,” not institutions or hospitals, as Leavitt told the committee many times.

One ER physician I spoke with said he was “dumbfounded” when he listened to today’s testimony. Dr. Art Kellerman, a long-time emergency room physician at Grady Hospital in Atlanta and Dean for Health Policy at Emory University continued, “This is mind-boggling. It’s deeply disturbing that the two cabinet secretaries most responsible simply are not going to take responsibility for the current crisis in our Emergency Departments.”

For the American College of Emergency Physicians, overcrowded emergency rooms have been a concern for quite some time. “This is an EXTREME crisis, not just for surge capacity (in the event of a terrorist attack), but day-to-day capacity,” the group’s president, Dr. Linda Lawrence, told CNN following Monday’s hearing.

A few years ago, my husband sliced his hand in the kitchen. Fortunately, I knew of a smaller hospital nearby. Its ER wasn’t too crowded and he got in pretty quickly. I couldn’t do that today. That hospital is closed. Today I would have to go to a different hospital with the potential of an overcrowded emergency room and a long wait.

Have you been to an emergency room recently? Did you have to wait a long time?  Are you concerned about emergency departments in hospitals in the city where you live being able to handle ordinary patient care, let alone coping with the disaster following a terrorist attack?

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.