NI in the News

The Alzheimer's Association recently released some frightening statistics: There are currently 5.3 million Americans living with the disease. It affects one in eight people over the age of 65. And caring for all those people costs about $148 billion a year…"We certainly need better drugs," says Dr. Alan Lerner, director of the Memory and Cognition Center at University Hospitals Case Medical Center. Lerner is presently recruiting patients for two clinical trials at UH: one that will test a drug to improve symptom control and one that will test to see if an antibody infusion helps clear the plaques in the brain that some believe cause the disease.

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According to the Alzheimer’s Association Web site, it is estimated that as many as five million people in the U.S. are living with Alzheimer’s disease. That includes 13 percent over the age of 65 and nearly 50 percent who are 85 and older. Erie County Serving Our Seniors’ research has identified 124 individuals in the 65-75-age bracket caring for a loved one with memory impairment…It’s called The Caregiver Knowledge & Skills Project. It’s a research study being conducted by The University Memory & Aging Center of Case Western Reserve University and University Hospitals Case Medical Center…

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Dr. Cathy Sila, director of the Stroke and Cerebrovascular Center at the University Hospitals Neurological Institute in Cleveland, will also be the first occupant of the hospitals' George M. Humphrey II Chair in Neurology, which will help fund her research in the field.

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Dr. Max Wiznitzer a pediatric neurologist at Rainbow Babies and Children's Hospital, has been dealing with autistic children for twenty five years…takes part in an autism debate on Larry King Live.

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William Searing is an Eagle Scout who loves hiking, adventure, art and sports. At age 19, he's in an education program that bridges the gap from high school to getting a job. Wil has autism… Dr. Max Wiznitzer, a child neurologist at Rainbow Babies & Children's Hospital in Cleveland, Ohio, has been treating children with autism for more than 30 years. He said he's still not quite convinced that the incidence is going up either. One explanation is that the way autism cases were counted in the CDC study and in the California study are not the same. "We need to investigate if there's a true rise," Wiznitzer said.

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Lessons learned from the sudden death of actress Natasha Richardson may have helped save the life of young Morgan McCracken. The seven-year-old girl was hit on the side of the head on March 17 by a baseball while playing in her family's front yard in Mentor, Ohio. Her parents iced the small bump and the swelling subsided. … Morgan was whisked to the local emergency room, where doctors ordered a CT scan and immediately put her on a helicopter to Rainbow Babies and Children's Hospital in Cleveland. She was operated on in the early hours of March 20. … Dr. Alan Cohen, chief of pediatric neurosurgery at the Cleveland hospital, said by the time Morgan was complaining of a headache the blood clot had started expanding. "She was barely arousable by the time she got to Rainbow because the blood clot had been expanding slowly but surely over the past two days," Dr. Cohen said yesterday.

Regional cooperation among hospitals on a potentially lifesaving treatment for people who collapse from sudden cardiac arrest is in doubt because MetroHealth Medical Center and Cleveland Emergency Medical Services do not support it. …Doctors at University Hospitals Case Medical Center are advocating a systemwide approach to get these patients to hospitals that provide cooling therapy … "In the past, we thought this was a hopeless cause," said Dr. Michael DeGeorgia, UH's director of neuro-intensive care and a proponent of cooling therapy. "We know now there's a lot we can do about it. Now, we cool patients and they walk and talk and go home."

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