Cedars Sinai Medical Center

The Los Angeles Planning Commission on Thursday approved the construction of a tower at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and rezoned a vacant Westwood lot so that it can become a city park. Cedars-Sinai received approval for a 200,000-square-foot expansion that will include 100 new patient beds and 700 parking spaces.

They belong to a club that no one else will ever join. Its numbers are dropping and notoriety is fading, and they risk becoming little more than a footnote in the history of the AIDS crisis. They were infected with HIV as newborns at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, through transfusions of donated blood that carried a virus so virulent it was killing healthy young men, and so new and bewildering, it did not yet have a name. It was 1985 before a blood test was developed that could detect the virus.

Cedars-Sinai Medical Center to Reduce Staff: The Los Angeles hospital said it will eliminate 350 positions by Nov. 1, bringing to 700 the number of positions that it has slashed this year. Ron Wise, hospital spokesman, said the medical center will try to accomplish the reductions by not filling current or future job openings, but some layoffs will also be necessary. Wise also said the hospital is re-evaluating a planned $300-million expansion of the medical center.

Indianapolis Colts quarterback Peyton Manning may not be ready to play Sunday's opener, team officials announced this week. The news has fans wondering what's keeping Manning out of the game against the Houston Texans -- ending his 227-game streak -- and how long it might take him to recover. Manning on May 23 had surgery for a herniated disc in the back of his neck that was pressing on a nerve -- while the NFL lockout was in full swing and his access to the team's doctors was reportedly somewhat limited.

Singer Barbra Streisand has donated $5 million to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in L.A. for a new women's heart center, hospital officials said Wednesday. Among other things, the Barbra Streisand Women's Cardiovascular Research and Education Program will expand research about female cardiovascular disease and raise awareness about it in the community, according to a statement released by Cedars-Sinai.

To help relieve overcrowding at the county morgue, pathologists from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center will perform some autopsies for the coroner at the hospital, the Board of Supervisors decided Tuesday. The coroner's office also will train Cedars-Sinai medical residents in forensic pathology, at no cost to the county, according to the agreement. Supervisors authorized the office to make similar arrangements with other hospitals.

Cedars-Sinai Medical Center will open a medical storefront Wednesday at the Beverly Center. Beverly Center marketing director Evette Caceres said the $250,000 Picture Your Health storefront is intended to create a "comfortable environment" that blends into the shopping scene. The storefront will provide testing for breast cancer, osteoporosis and strokes at a lower fee than a visit to Cedars-Sinai, said Joan Herbst, a marketing director for the medical center.

A multimillion-dollar gift will allow Cedars-Sinai Medical Center to build an eight-story critical-care tower that will replace two buildings destroyed in the 1994 Northridge earthquake, hospital officials announced Wednesday. The size of the gift from Suzanne and David Saperstein was undisclosed, but hospital officials said it was larger than a $14-million donation given to Cedars-Sinai in 2002. David Saperstein founded Metro Networks, which produced radio news.

In a departure from tradition, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles has become one of a handful of private hospitals not affiliated with universities to seek to patent new discoveries by staff researchers. While many universities have had such a policy for years--mostly for nonmedical discoveries--few medical researchers have sought to file patents on their work.

The toddler with the blazing fever? Ibuprofen. The elderly man having trouble breathing? A gurney, stat. The fledgling chef whose hand got mangled in a Cuisinart? Bandage. What about the dozens of other waiting-room patients in varying degrees of misery, each with medical histories and vital signs to take, frightened family members in need of soothing, and always the same pointed question: How long before I see a doctor?

Picture this: You're in the hospital, attached to an electrocardiograph machine, and your cardiologist is about to tee off on the 16th hole. A new iPhone app will let the doctor call up your EKG results right there. Cedars-Sinai Medical Center is one of several large hospitals nationwide that are rolling out an application allowing cardiologists to view electrocardiograph results via iPhones and iPads. The technology, created by AirStrip Technologies in San Antonio and scheduled for release Monday, allows doctors to remotely analyze a range of EKG data.

Helen B. Landgarten, a Los Angeles artist and pioneering art therapist who established a clinical art therapy program at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and graduate departments in art therapy at Immaculate Heart College and Loyola Marymount University, has died. She was 89. Landgarten died Wednesday at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center after suffering a stroke, Loyola Marymount announced. In the 1970s, Landgarten helped legitimize art therapy, which combines art and counseling, on the West Coast.

Los Angeles Times The gig : Thomas M. Priselac is president and chief executive of Cedars-Sinai Health System, a sprawling complex in Los Angeles with 11,000 employees, vast research and teaching programs and the largest private, nonprofit medical center in the Western United States. The red carpet: Cedars-Sinai has long been associated with Hollywood. George Burns Road and Gracie Allen Drive run through its middle right past the Steven Spielberg Pediatric Research Center.

Los Angeles police have opened an investigation into circumstances surrounding the death of actress Brittany Murphy. Police have been dispatched to Cedars-Sinai and to the Los Angeles home where Murphy, 32, went into cardiac arrest earlier today. Police sources emphasized that their inquiry was preliminary, adding they could not say whether it would point to any criminal conduct. [Note: An earlier version of this post incorrectly said the house was located in West Hollywood.] L.A. city firefighters responded to a call from the home in the 1800 block of Rising Glen Road.

The gig: Owner of Rossmoor Pastries, one of the region's largest independent commercial bakeries. It supplies pastries, cakes and other baked goods to large clients, including Disneyland, Staples Center, Angel Stadium, Universal Studios and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Some big projects : Created a gingerbread version of Staples Center that was rolled out to center court during halftime of a Los Angeles Lakers game. Baked a 5-foot-tall birthday cake for pop star Miley Cyrus.

Cedars-Sinai Medical Center officials said Monday that 260 patients had been exposed to high doses of radiation during CT brain scans during an 18-month period, up from the hospital's original estimate of 206 in September. A review by the hospital also found that about 20% of the patients received exposure directly to the lenses of their eyes, which puts them at a higher risk for cataracts, said Simi Singer, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles hospital. Of the newly identified cases, 47 patients had died by the time the hospital began contacting victims -- a reflection, officials said, of their serious illnesses, not the radiation exposure.

Cedars-Sinai Medical Center is about to embark on a major expansion, adding a 1,900-space parking structure and four buildings to its already crowded grounds in an effort to come to terms with changing demands for medical service.

Four young men at a Hollywood "rave" party passed around a water container they believed held a drug early Thursday morning and drank what turned out to be pure lye, authorities said. The four, whose ages ranged from 16 to 20, fell unconscious a short time later, and three were in respiratory arrest when they arrived by ambulance at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, said Los Angeles Police Lt. Bernie Larralde. The fourth was conscious but incoherent and was taken to Kaiser Permanente hospital.

A psychiatrist who treated a pregnant Anna Nicole Smith for drug withdrawal testified Monday that the model said she was willing to "do anything" for her unborn daughter but ultimately walked away from a plan to break her dependency on prescription medication. Ten months after the hospitalization described by Dr. Nathalie Maullin, the 39-year-old former Playboy playmate died from an overdose. Prosecutors are pursuing charges against her boyfriend, Howard K. Stern, and two physicians for conspiracy to illegally provide her with prescription medication and other charges.

The chief executive of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center said Thursday that he regretted the "circumstances" that subjected 206 patients to radiation overdoses and laid out reforms made since the hospital discovered that a CT scanner had been set erroneously for 18 months. In a written statement, Thomas M. Priselac said: "We take very seriously our responsibility for operating medical equipment in the safest possible manner, and deeply regret the circumstances that led to patients undergoing CT brain perfusion studies receiving a higher than appropriate level of radiation."