Bypass

Texas Rangers President Nolan Ryan is in a Houston hospital undergoing tests on his heart. The Rangers said in a statement Monday the 64-year-old Ryan is "resting comfortably and reports he is feeling better. " He is expected to be released from the hospital in a few days. Ryan had a double-bypass operation in 2000. Doctors at that time also discovered another, undisclosed condition. The team's news release said the discomfort began while he was at his home in Georgetown, Texas, on Sunday morning and "is believed to be a recurrence of the heart condition which he has previously experienced.

Ambrose Schindler, player of the game in the 1940 Rose Bowl, inspired one of the most delightfully alliterative nicknames in USC football history: Amblin' Amby. Later, daringly darting through freeway traffic, Amby drove a Jaguar with a vanity license plate reading: X USC QB. "People would pass me, honk their horns and give me the two-finger SC salute," he told friends. "If they gave me one finger, I knew they were from UCLA, or maybe Notre Dame. " These days, though, Schindler's movements are limited to leisurely strolls through his Redondo Beach neighborhood.

Six Republican contenders chasing Mitt Romney largely sidestepped the chance to take shots at the nominal early front-runner during the first significant debate of the 2012 presidential race. Going into the debate in New Hampshire—where the nation’s first primary will be held early next year—the expectation had been that Romney, along with President Obama, would bear the brunt of his rivals’ attacks. But no such scrum materialized as the candidates largely trained their fire on the incumbent.

Prospective Republican presidential candidate Jon Huntsman said Saturday that he won't try to compete in the Iowa caucuses early next year. Huntsman, responding to a voter's question, said he is opposed to federal agricultural and ethanol subsidies. Such financial support is a make-or-break issue in Iowa, which grows nearly one-fifth of the nation's corn and 15% of its soybeans. "I'm not competing in Iowa for a reason. I don't believe in subsidies that prop up corn, soybeans" and ethanol, he said.

For many seeking privacy and space, the high desert of the Antelope Valley is an oasis from the urban density of the rest of Los Angeles County. Lots are large; neighbors are few. Many residents chafe at restrictions, such as zoning and permitting laws, that they consider onerous and irrelevant. But few have defied those regulations like Alan Kimble Fahey , a determined eccentric who has spent years expanding his house on 1.7 acres in Acton into a colorful extravaganza of structures with wings and bridges, a tower and a yurt-turned-aviary for his chickens, turkeys, and hens.

Gastric bypass surgery has been shown to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease in adults, but it may be even more effective at reducing risk in teens, researchers said Monday. Although the weight loss in both groups was about the same, the surgery, formally known as Roux-en-Y surgery, gave teens a greater improvement in a variety of biochemical markers that are normally thought to be predictive of heart problems, researchers from the Stanford College of Medicine reported at a Digestive Diseases Week meeting in Chicago.

Gastric bypass surgery for weight loss doubles the risk of developing alcoholism compared with Lap-Band surgery, Swedish researchers reported Monday. Researchers already knew that bypass surgery allows the body to absorb alcohol quicker, but the new findings, reported at the Digestive Diseases Week meeting in Chicago, are the first to suggest an increased risk of problems associated with the effect. Dr. Magdalena Plecka Ostlund of the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm and her colleagues examined medical records for 12,277 patients who underwent bariatric surgery in Sweden between 1980 and 2006.

The lovely, heartbreaking "Fly Away" benefits from superb performances and a gripping story managed with simplicity and grace by writer-producer-director Janet Grillo. As sensitive and affecting as this mother-daughter drama may be, the film skillfully bypasses its genre's potential pitfalls, opting for intimacy over sensationalism, poignancy over sentimentality. Jeanne (Beth Broderick) is a single mother devoted to the care of her daughter, Mandy (Ashley Rickards), an autistic teenager soothed by repetition — songs, food, phraseology — but prone to uncontrollable outbursts and rages.

Bypass surgery is better for patients with severe heart failure than standard medical therapy, but not by a lot, and many patients who don't want to undergo surgery may do just as well without it, researchers said Monday. In the first new trial in three decades to compare bypass surgery and conventional treatment, researchers found that improvements in medical therapy — particularly the use of drugs such as beta blockers to lower blood pressure and statins to reduce cholesterol — have sharply narrowed the effectiveness gap between the two approaches, doctors reported at a New Orleans meeting of the American College of Cardiology.

  Bypass surgery is better for patients with severe heart failure than standard medical therapy, but not by a lot, and many patients who don’t want to undergo surgery may do just as well without it, researchers said Monday. In the first new trial in three decades to compare bypass surgery to conventional treatment, researchers found that improvements in medical therapy, particularly the use of drugs such as beta blockers to lower blood pressure and statins to reduce cholesterol, have sharply narrowed the effectiveness gap between the two approaches, bringing medical therapy near par with surgery, doctors reported at a New Orleans meeting of the American College of Cardiology.