Brain Damage

A Compton jury has awarded more than $8 million to the family of a boy who suffered brain damage during birth at a Monterey Park hospital. After a three-week trial, jurors this week found Dr. Nicolai Foong, a Monterey Park obstetrician, liable for the injuries suffered by Kevin Hsieh during his Oct. 2, 1997, delivery at Garfield Medical Center, the family's attorney said. "If Dr.

Convicted Thousand Oaks killer Mark Scott Thornton suffered a "precipitous" slowdown in weight gain during the first six months of his life, a defense expert testified Thursday, saying it possibly led to brain damage. Ventura pediatrician Robert Fostakowsky said medical records show that Thornton weighed eight pounds, five ounces at birth but had grown to only 13 pounds, 14 ounces six months later.

Brandon Zucker, the 4 1/2-year-old boy injured last month at Disneyland, suffered brain damage and will most likely be moved to a long-term care facility, hospital officials said Thursday. The boy from Canyon Country in northern Los Angeles County remains in a coma at UCI Medical Center in Orange after the Sept. 22 accident.

CAT scans on Siamese twins separated 11 days ago show no brain damage, and the 7-month-old boys opened their eyes at their mother's touch, a hospital official said Thursday. Patrick and Benjamin Binder were born joined at the backs of their heads. They had separate brains but shared some skull bone and a major artery.

A jury on Friday awarded $7.4 million to a child who suffered severe brain damage as an infant after doctors at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center failed to promptly treat an infection. Attorneys for Paris Campen, who was a little more than a month old at the time of the incident, argued that doctors at the hospital's neonatal intensive care unit were negligent when they did not administer an antibiotic to the newborn until eight hours after she began showing symptoms that indicated an infection.

One hesitates to say it, but it would take some type of demented genius to surpass "Brain Damage" (citywide) as the cinematic stomach-turner of 1988. Before anyone accepts this as a challenge, he or she should understand that this tale is conceived as both a horror film about death and as the darkest of black comedies. The film makers juggle so many balls in the air that it's a wonder any remain aloft. The story is about addiction, promiscuity, power and commerce.

British scientists say they have been able to repair damaged brains in rats by injecting them with a type of fetal brain cells called neuroepithelial stem cells, a finding that could eventually benefit victims of Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. A team from Maudsley Hospital in London reported in the journal Neuroscience that the stem cells, when injected into rat brains, migrated to the damage site and took over the function of the damaged cells.

Most patients undergoing cardiac bypass surgery are placed on heart-lung machines that cool their blood to reduce their bodies' oxygen needs. Now researchers have found that taking an extra 10 to 15 minutes to slowly rewarm patients at the end of their surgery reduces brain overheating, lowering the risk of brain damage and memory loss. Researchers from Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C.

Richard Lucio DeHoyos, the man charged with abducting and killing a 9-year-old Santa Ana schoolgirl, may have suffered brain damage that left him with an "abnormal" tendency toward "impulsivity and violence," a UC Irvine researcher testified Wednesday. Dr. Monte S. Buchsbaum, director of the UCI Brain Imaging Center, told jurors that a brain scan indicated that DeHoyos may have suffered blunt-force trauma injuries to the right frontal lobe of his brain.

A neurologist asked Gregory Scott Smith to smile Wednesday in his penalty trial for the 1990 kidnap-murder of an 8-year-old Northridge boy, then diagnosed Smith as mildly brain-damaged, during testimony that was meant to aid prosecutors.