Medical Equipment And Supplies

The abrupt shutdown of two aging nuclear reactors that produce a radioisotope widely used in medical imaging has forced physicians in the U.S. and abroad into a crisis, requiring them to postpone or cancel necessary scans for heart disease and cancer, or turn to alternative tests that are not as accurate, take longer and expose patients to higher doses of radiation. Because of limits on testing produced by the shortage, some patients will undergo heart or cancer surgeries that could have been prevented by imaging, and others will miss needed surgeries because of the lack of testing, said Dr. Michael Graham of the University of Iowa, president of SNM, formerly the Society of Nuclear Medicine.

Dr. Stuart Meloy never set out to study orgasms. It was an accident. He was in the operating room one day in 1998, implanting electrodes into a patient's spine to treat her chronic leg pain. (The electrodes are connected to a device that fires impulses to the brain to block pain signals.) But when he turned on the power, "the patient suddenly let out something between a shriek and moan," says Meloy, an anesthesiologist and pain specialist in North Carolina.

After a series of surprise inspections in Los Angeles County, Medicare fraud investigators found persistent corruption among medical equipment suppliers who set up phony offices that billed the government $21 million over one year, prompting officials to call for stronger enforcement efforts, according a report to be released today. Investigators checked 905 suppliers. Their offices should have been filled with wheelchairs, crutches, bedpans and other medical equipment.

If you live in Los Angeles, Ventura, Orange or San Diego county and think you are having a heart attack, call 911 rather than have a friend or family member drive you to the hospital. It could mean the difference between life and death. That's the conclusion of a UCLA professor who reviewed data from counties around the nation -- including four in Southern California -- that have implemented a new approach to handling heart attack patients.

The government is putting millions of Medicare dollars at risk by authorizing fictitious sellers of wheelchairs, prosthetics and other medical supplies to submit reimbursement claims with only limited review, congressional investigators say. A Government Accountability Office study, obtained by the Associated Press, sought to follow up on oversight gaps that have plagued the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services since at least 2005.

The government paid more than $1 billion in questionable Medicare claims for medical supplies that showed little relation to patients' conditions, including blood glucose strips for sexual impotence and special diabetic shoes for leg amputees, congressional investigators say. Billions more in taxpayer dollars may have been wasted over the last decade because the government-run health program for the elderly and disabled paid out claims with blank or invalid diagnosis codes, such as a "?"

Heart patients who have drug-coated stents inserted to prop open blocked coronary arteries should stay on anti-clotting drugs for at least a year, several doctor groups said in an advisory issued last week. Drug-coated stents are often chosen over bare metal stents because they slowly release medication that reduces the chance of arteries reclogging, which can mean follow-up surgery. However, the newer stents mean a small but significant increased risk of clotting.

California health regulators have cited White Memorial Medical Center for failing to properly sterilize a medical instrument later implicated in a deadly bacterial outbreak in the hospital's neonatal intensive care unit. White Memorial, near downtown Los Angeles, closed its busy neonatal intensive care unit last month after identifying an outbreak of \o7Pseudomonas aeruginosa\f7, which sickened five babies. Two of the babies are believed to have died as a result.

Can the RESPeRATE breathing system really lower blood pressure? CHARLES S., LAVERNE --- The product: RESPeRATE looks like the subject line of a junk e-mail, but it's actually the name of a medical device designed to lower blood pressure by slowing down breathing. Sold over the Internet and in some doctors' offices for about $300, it has two basic parts: a belt that senses a person's breathing rate and a Walkman-like player seemingly stuck on the Hearing Test Channel.

Edwards Lifesciences Corp., a maker of artificial heart valves, received a warning letter about quality control at its Irvine plant from the Food and Drug Administration. The warning came after U.S. inspectors found problems with quality systems, documentation and complaint handling, the company said. Until Edwards resolves problems identified in the letter, it won't receive pre-market approvals for any devices "reasonably related to those issues," the company said. Edwards shares fell $1.