Free Republic

WASHINGTON, Dec. 6, 2007 – Throughout the Middle East, the U.S. Navy provides vital medical support to U.S. troops serving in the war on terror, the Navy surgeon general said today during a visit to the region. Navy Vice Adm. Adam M. Robinson Jr. spoke to online journalists and “bloggers” from Iraq, where he was midway into a trip touring medical facilities in the region. Robinson has visited U.S. Naval Forces Central Command, in Bahrain; Camp Arifjan, Kuwait; and Camp Buehring, Kuwait, which is 50 miles from the Iraqi border. In Camp Arifijan, Robinson visited the 44-bed U.S. Military Hospital...

A doctor has been charged with deliberately hastening the death of a disabled man so that he could harvest his kidneys for another patient, in the first case of its kind in America. The case centres on allegations that Hootan Roozrokh, a transplant surgeon in California, ordered a nurse to administer lethal doses of narcotic painkillers and sedatives to Ruben Navarro, who was terminally ill, after taking him off life support. The man died hours later. Prosecutors claim that Dr Roozrokh, 33, acted without a legitimate medical purpose in his handling of Mr Navarro, 25, who suffered from a neurological...

A 15-year-old boy who allegedly delivered a baby by Caesarean section in an attempt to set a world record as the youngest surgeon apparently fled as police prepared to arrest him on Tuesday. Raj Sekharan, superintendent of police in Tiruchirappalli district in southern Tamil Nadu state, said the boy had absconded and police were looking for him. On Monday police arrested the parents of Dhileepan Raj, both doctors who supervised their son while he allegedly performed the Caesarean section. They were charged with cheating, forgery of records, endangering human life, concealing evidence and abetting a crime. The two were jailed...

U.S. Army Capt. Thornton S. Mu treats Ibrahim, an 8-year-old boy who arrived at Forward Operating Base Sykes seeking medical attention. Mu works as a pediatrician when not on deployment. U.S. Army courtesy photo Flight Surgeon in Iraq Treats Injured Local Child Deployed pediatrician gets a chance to help local boy with broken bones and shrapnel injuries. By Spc. Daniel Bearl 25th Combat Aviation Brigade Public Affairs TAL AFAR, Iraq, Jan. 19, 2007 -- When Capt. Thornton S. Mu deployed to Iraq he hoped that he would be able to work with children. "I had always envisioned that even...

Life-saving operations on soldiers in combat zones could become possible thanks to a portable robotic surgeon that allows doctors to perform surgery on the battlefield without endangering themselves.Surgical robots that can be operated remotely are already used in some civilian hospitals. These include a system called "da Vinci" made by US company Intuitive Surgical, and another system called ZEUS, made by US firm Computer Motion. However, these existing systems are large and cumbersome, taking up much of an operating room. Now Blake Hannaford and colleagues at the University of Washington, in Seattle, US, have come up with a system small...

AL ASAD, Iraq (Aug. 21, 2006) -- Colds and broken bones take up many hours of each day while deployed for Navy Lt. Stacey R. Black, flight surgeon, Marine Heavy Helicopter Squadron 361, Marine Aircraft Group 16 (Reinforced), 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing. For someone who has been driven her entire life, deploying to Iraq has been another stepping stone for her future plans. "I think it's important to think about what's ahead of me while I am in Iraq, because even though I am out here, life still goes on back in the states," said Black. "When we deploy, it...

Dr. Jonathan P. Oline waits for his commissioning ceremony to begin.  Oline received a direct commission as a lieutenant colonel during a ceremony at Headquarters, U.S. Army Special Operations Command, Fort Bragg, N.C., April 29, 2006.   Photo by Gillian M. Albro U.S. Army Lt. Col. Jonathan Oline Heart Surgeon Restarts Career, Accepts Direct Commission By Paul D. Prince U.S. Army Special Operations Command FORT BRAGG, N.C., May 3, 2006 — Coronary specialist Dr. Jonathan P. Oline had a change of heart and a change in career. He put his 17-year private practice on hold to serve his country. The...

Dr. Everett Spees, a cardiothoracic surgeon at several local hospitals who helped to develop the field of organ transplants, was a bit startled to find the Army calling, asking if he'd volunteer. A retired colonel, he'd offered his services on the day after Sept. 11, 2001, but no one called back for more than two years -- after the military was thoroughly embroiled in Iraq and needing more soldiers.

Allegations of fake research reach new high By MARTHA MENDOZA/AP National Writer Wednesday, August 24, 2005 1:03 PM CDT On the night of his 12th wedding anniversary, Dr. Andrew Friedman was terrified. This brilliant surgeon and researcher at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School feared that he was about to lose everything - his career, his family, the life he'd built - because his boss was coming closer and closer to the truth: For the past three years, Friedman had been faking - actually making up - data in some of the respected, peer-reviewed studies he had published...

Dr. Claude H. Organ Jr., an internationally known surgeon and medical educator who was the second African American to serve as president of the American College of Surgeons, died Saturday in Oakland. He was 78. Organ was editor of the prestigious Journal of American Medical Association publication Archives of Surgery for 15 years. He came to Oakland in 1989 to establish and lead the University of California, Davis/University of California San Francisco East Bay Surgery Department, now the UCSF-East Bay department of surgery. There, he oversaw the training of dozens of surgeons, including several African-American women, a population severely underrepresented...

A prominent plastic surgeon has been reprimanded and indefinitely suspended by Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center after he left a patient in the middle of an operation to perform surgery down the street at another hospital. Dr. Joseph Upton, who specializes in complex hand surgeries, has voluntarily agreed to stop practicing medicine until at least May 4 while state regulators investigate whether he has double-booked operations on other occasions. Beth Israel officials said Upton left an adult male patient during a scheduled break in a lengthy operation on March 17 and returned before the procedure was scheduled to resume. However,...

DALLAS - Dr. Charles R. Baxter, one of the surgeons who tried to save President John F. Kennedy after he was shot, has died, a colleague said. He was 75. The surgeon died Thursday of pneumonia at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, where he had been professor emeritus of surgery since 1993, said Dr. Robert Rege, chairman of surgery. Baxter was the emergency room director at Parkland Memorial Hospital, where Kennedy was taken after being shot by Lee Harvey Oswald on Nov. 22, 1963. "As soon as we realized we had nothing medical to do, we...

Fox News is reporting that one American citizen and two Canadian citizens, all three of Pakistani descent and sympathisers to al-Qaeda, have been arrested in/near Kabul. Details sketchy, developing...........

I don't know how many operations I performed in my surgical career. I know that I performed 17,000 of one particular type, and 7,000 of another. I practiced surgery for thirty-nine years, so perhaps I performed 50,000 operations. I was successful, and patients were coming to me from all over the world. And one of the things that endeared me to the parents of my patients was the way my incisions healed. No one likes big scars, but they are especially upsetting to mothers when they appear on their children. So I set out early on to make my...

Wrong Surgery Performed On Woman As Team Watches   POSTED: 11:19 pm EST November 4, 2004 UPDATED: 11:40 pm EST November 4, 2004  ORLANDO, Fla. -- A surgical team watched as a doctor performed the wrong surgery on a woman in an operating room of Halifax Medical Center's same-day surgical unit, according to Local 6 News.         On Aug. 26, Toni Braun was supposed to have a small pre-cancerous mass removed from her left breast.   However, when she awoke, she found a bandage covering a scar roughly 6 inches above the breast.   X-rays confirmed...

An Arborg cattle farmer made a horrific discovery Monday when he found the partially skinned carcass of one of his animals that was missing its tongue and apparently drained of its blood. "The whole thing has turned out to be more sinister than I thought," said Yvonne, a neighbour, who examined the mutilated animal. She asked not to have her last name used to protect her family. "What sort of weirdos have we got travelling in our neighbourhood?" Gordon, who would only allow The Sun to print his first name, said he discovered the carcass on his farm Monday afternoon....

Dr. Harold Kletschka - Dead MINNEAPOLIS (AP) - Dr. Harold Kletschka, a cardiac surgeon who pioneered a heart pump now commonly used in open-heart surgery, died Saturday after a stroke, said his friend and biographer, David Racer. He was 79. In the 1960s Kletschka developed the Bio-Pump, a heart pump now sold by Medtronic. The external pump circulates blood during surgery. As an Air Force surgeon, Kletschka developed the idea for the centrifugal heart pump in the 1950s while watching an orange juicer in a San Francisco diner, his friend said. Kletschka held several medical patents and most recently was...

Hello my FRiends, I spoke with my dear friend, Freeper uprisen, and she really needs our help. Her hip has been broken for some time now, and was not correctly diagnosed (the break was in the back). She has been unable to walk, relying on wheelchairs, crutches, or a cane, and the bone has been badly displaced. She is asking for your prayers to bring a good orthopedic surgeon to her, and that the damage is repaired so she can walk again. The Brand K HMO has been slow in responding, and she finally had a CAT scan last week,...

A fully conscious New Zealand man waited six hours while surgeons debated the best course of action to remove a knife that had been imbedded deep into his brain. Police in Wellington, New Zealand, said the 37-year-old man was stabbed during a disagreement at about 4 a.m. local time, the Dominion Post reported. Surgeons spent six hours planning the operation, which was successful. Martin Hunn, a Wellington Hospital neurosurgeon, said the man "would have been in pain" as he waited for surgery, according to the report. Dr. Hunn consulted an ear, nose and throat specialist before the man's surgery. Though...

SADDAM Hussein’s henchmen last night pleaded with Russia to find them a top surgeon to save the tyrant’s life. They sent an SOS to Moscow as their leader lay badly wounded at a secret hideaway in Baghdad. Saddam is believed to have suffered abdominal injuries when cruise missiles scored a direct hit on his bunker on Day One of the war last Thursday. British intelligence chiefs say that he was hauled from the rubble and whisked away in an ambulance hours after the sudden strike that launched Operation Iraqi Freedom. They are convinced he underwent a major operation and a...

Surgeon freed after 'dirty bomb' arrest By Phil Reeves Asia Correspondent 20 November 2002 A British-trained Pakistani surgeon was freed yesterday after nearly a month in secret detention. He says he was interrogated by FBI and CIA agents investigating claims that he helped al-Qa'ida develop radiological and nuclear bombs as well as chemical and biological weapons. Dr Amir Aziz, 46, an orthopaedic surgeon – whose ordeal confirms American concerns on the nature of the "dirty bombs" and other weapons that al-Qa'ida might be trying to acquire – said the accusations were "the most ludicrous thing I have heard in my...

BOSTON--A surgeon whose license was suspended after he left a patient on the operating table while he ran a check to the bank owed money to his former domestic partner. Dr. David Arndt was ordered after a court battle to pay Dr. Stephen Goldfinger, a psychiatrist, a portion of his income for 15 years after they broke up in 1994, court records show. Arndt challenged the agreement and lost. He was ordered to pay court fees and other costs up to $25,000, and to continue to make support payments up to $500,000 to Goldfinger. According to the state Board of...