Barrow growing...Neurological facility's 7-story tower at St. Joe's to double capacity, add high-tech procedures
(Arizona Republic-July 8)

"It's where Saudi royalty came for intricate back surgery.

It helped treat Pvt. Jessica Lynch's war injuries.

It's where patients are chilled almost to death so their brain surgeries can go more smoothly.

And now it's getting bigger.

The new Barrow Neurosciences Tower at St. Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center in central Phoenix will open to patients next week. The $160 million, seven-story tower will double the surgical capacity at world-renowned Barrow.

Barrow now will have the largest number of operating rooms of its type in the world, said Dr. Robert Spetzler, director of the Barrow Neurological Institute.

"There are few, if any, neuroscience centers like this in the world," he said. "It's incredible to have a building this size, with this many surgical suites and this many patient beds solely dedicated to neuroscience care."

For Barrow, the expansion means a chance to add technology as well as beds.

Among the new features is an extremely powerful magnetic resonance imaging machine that can provide immediate brain scans during operations.

That will let doctors check during surgery to make sure the entire brain tumor has been removed. Now, patients have to be sewn up, sent for the scans and then sent back for surgery again....First of its type

The MRI machine, a 3-Tesla Intraoperative Magnetic, is the first of its type to be installed at any hospital. Other MRI machines are typically 1.5-Tesla, which means Barrow's new MRI provides even more detailed scans.

"It's the difference between regular television and high-definition television," Spetzler said......Because the magnet is so powerful - it can pull a gun out of a holster - patients are loaded into the machine on special iron-free equipment.

Another gee-whiz feature of the tower is its "supercool" operating room, where the temperature can be reduced to 55 degrees from 68 to 70 degrees in just three minutes.

The chilling is key for a special technique Spetzler developed to bring a patient to the brink of death to lower the risk of complications during brain surgery.

In "cardiac standstill," doctors chill the patient's body so that the heart and blood flow are stopped. That makes it easier for a surgeon to go in and clip a brain aneurysm. Spetzler has done the procedure 107 times. The Discovery Health Channel broadcast one of the operations recently.

The neuroscience tower also contains:
• Eleven surgical suites dedicated to neurosurgery. Each suite has a microscope connected to a computer that allows surgeons to see on a computer screen an extremely magnified image of what they are operating on.

• All of the suites will have video-conferencing capabilities that will allow physicians and medical students around the world to view what is happening in the operating rooms.

• Sixty-four intensive-care beds and 80 acute-care beds devoted to neurological and neurosurgical care. That's more than double what the hospital has now.

Barrow also has the largest neurosurgery residency-training program in the nation and more certified neuroscience registered nurses than any other hospital in the United States."

Older Men Can Make Big Gains to Avoid Heart Disease Risk with Five Habits

"High-risk coronary heart disease patients achieve therapeutic goals effectively with rosuvastatin
"Rosuvastatin 10 or 20 mg is an effective and safe therapeutic option for high-risk patients to achieve their lipid and apolipoprotein targets.

According to a study from the United States, "National Cholesterol Education Program Adult Treatment Panel III guidelines for patients at a high risk of coronary heart disease set a low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) target of<100 mg/dL. This target can be difficult to attain with diet and current therapy."

"In a 16-week multinational trial, 1993 high-risk patients were randomized to rosuvastatin 20 mg, atorvastatin 10 mg, atorvastatin 20 mg, simvastatin 20 mg, or simivastatin 40 mg for 8 ......."

Helping Alzheimer's Patients Picture The Past:
"(CBS ) There's no cure for Alzheimer's Disease, but patients can sometimes recover memories lost for years. That's how it's been for Joyce Gilbert. She was diagnosed with Alzheimer's in 2000, but is still able to share memories of childhood with her family.'Things that were lost because of the Alzheimer's are now brought out in her paintings,' said daughter-in-law JoAnn Gilbert. 'She shows us places we haven't been and things she hasn't been able to tell us about.'Joyce is becoming an accomplished painter with help from 'Memories in the Making,' a program artist Toni Morley brought to Bay Area care facilities five years ago.'I believe art is healing,' Morley explained. 'I've seen many miracles happen. I've seen whole pieces of people's history come back.....'"

Recognize and Respond to Early Alzheimer’s Signs
"Many clinicians and patients consider occasional forgetfulness an inevitable part of aging. But when does memory loss cross into territory that signals a more serious condition such as Alzheimer’s disease (AD)?

“That’s the difficulty with recognizing the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease,” says Brigid Reynolds, APRN, BC, nurse practitioner and clinical coordinator at the Memory Disorders Program at Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington, D.C. “Alzheimer’s is often misinterpreted and underrecognized by both family members and clinicians.”

Fewer than 50% of the 2 million individuals who have been diagnosed with AD receive treatment, says Reynolds. Another 2 million people experience AD symptoms but have not received a diagnosis from their physicians. Because AD medications such as cholinesterase inhibitors can provide symptomatic relief in the early stage of the disease, it is all the more important to recognize signs early on. The lack of an AD screening tool makes early diagnosis difficult, however. While a careful review of symptoms leads to an accurate diagnosis for more than 90% of patients, a thorough evaluation often is time-prohibitive in primary care settings..."

Report concludes Alzheimer costs will stagger government...:
" A new report concludes the price tag from Alzheimer disease will skyrocket over the next 25 years, particularly in Florida, home to the nation's fastest-growing over-65 and over-85 populations. The study prompted a new coalition of researchers, health care providers, business leaders and senior advocates to call for an 'all-out push' to find a cure..........."

American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry Releases Principles of Care for Patients with Dementia Due to Alzheimer's Disease: "Care model aims to improve quality of life for Alzheimer's patients and their caregivers

The American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry (AAGP) released today its position statement on principles of care for patients with dementia due to Alzheimer's disease (AD). With more than 4.5 million Americans suffering from AD, the most common form of dementia, and with this number expected to triple in the next 40-50 years, AAGP saw a critical need to provide a minimal set of care principles for medical professionals to follow when treating patients with AD.

"We are clearly in a period where we should all be thinking of Alzheimer's as a condition we can treat, even though we do not have a cure yet," said Constantine Lyketsos, M.D., M.H.S., professor at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and chair of the AAGP task force that prepared the position statement. .....
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American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry Releases Principles of Care for Patients with Dementia Due to Alzheimer's Disease: "Care model aims to improve quality of life for Alzheimer's patients and their caregivers

The American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry (AAGP) released today its position statement on principles of care for patients with dementia due to Alzheimer's disease (AD). With more than 4.5 million Americans suffering from AD, the most common form of dementia, and with this number expected to triple in the next 40-50 years, AAGP saw a critical need to provide a minimal set of care principles for medical professionals to follow when treating patients with AD.

"We are clearly in a period where we should all be thinking of Alzheimer's as a condition we can treat, even though we do not have a cure yet," said Constantine Lyketsos, M.D., M.H.S., professor at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and chair of the AAGP task force that prepared the position statement. .....
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NBC Video: Monitors To Track Alzheimer's Patients:
".....authorities are taking a high-tech approach to help locate Alzheimer's patients who have wandered away from home.Authorities estimate two-thirds of the 4.5 million Americans who suffer from Alzheimer's disease will wander off at some point. When that happens, rescuers have only hours to find them before they risk dying of exposure or other causes.A local service organization has donated money to the Wake County Sheriff's Office to help buy a directional antenna and 10 monitoring bracelets for Alzheimers patients.'(The bracelet) emits a signal, and once that person walks away, we come out with our deputies and use the wand to locate them,' Sheriff Donnie Harrison said, noting that he's been trying to implement the system for years......"

Constipation Linked to Aggression in Nursing Home Residents:
" Constipation can trigger physical aggression in a nursing home resident with dementia, researchers here reported.

In a large group of residents with dementia, those with constipation were about as likely to exhibit aggressive physical behavior as those who experienced hallucinations, said Ralph Leonard, M.D., M.P.H., of the medical software company CALM-MD here.

'To our knowledge no prior studies have investigated the association of constipation,' Dr. Leonard and colleagues said in the June 26 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine. 'We chose to study constipation a priori because it is common, modifiable, and recognized by clinicians to be a cause of many non-specific symptoms.'

The cross-sectional study also confirmed results of previous studies that depression, delusions, and hallucinations were linked with aggressive behavior in nursing home residents with dementia, the authors said...."