Patients

More than 200 patients at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center were inappropriately exposed to high doses of radiation from CT brain scans used to diagnose strokes, hospital officials told The Times on Friday. About 40% of the patients lost patches of hair as a result of the overdoses, a hospital spokesman said. Even so, the overdoses went undetected for 18 months as patients received eight times the dose normally delivered in the procedure, raising questions about why it took Cedars-Sinai so long to notice that something was wrong.

After she was diagnosed with Stage IV breast cancer that had spread to her left lung, Gloria Bailey's doctors recommended she have a mastectomy followed by hormone therapy to fight the tumors that remained. She followed their advice, but had a nagging feeling about the regimen. "The Lord was just telling me, 'They're not being aggressive enough,' " Bailey recalled.

In the Lodz ghetto in Poland, home to as many as 204,000 Jews during World War II, there were 170 doctors, as well as a few nurses and midwives, according to diaries and memoirs. Like all the others, they lived with the daily terror of being shipped off to a death camp. There was almost no food, no medication and certainly no X-ray machines, laboratories or any of the other accouterments that we think of as essential to medicine today. And yet, when there was nothing to give the sick, the Lodz doctors did find something.

Over the last two years, three-quarters of San Francisco's uninsured adults have enrolled in a public program that guarantees access to medical services, an effort that is being touted as a national model during the rancorous debate over healthcare reform. More than 46,000 adults have enrolled in Healthy San Francisco since it was launched; this first-in-the-nation city-run universal healthcare effort has received high marks in recent independent studies. The program is funded in part by an employer mandate, a controversial component of the plans under discussion in Washington.

As a registered dietitian, Sharon Salomon of Phoenix teaches clients how to eat right and lose weight. But despite her expertise, Salomon says there's just one word to describe her own physique: "fat." To some, Salomon's 5-foot-2, 170-pound body would be a professional deal-breaker. After all, are chubby dietitians or portly physicians in any position to advise others how to get healthy? That question is at the heart of a debate set off when Dr. Regina Benjamin was nominated for surgeon general.

The primary treatments for borderline personality disorder are behavioral strategies, such as dialectical behavioral therapy, which University of Washington psychologist Marsha Linehan devised almost two decades ago. In this approach, the patients acknowledge that they have damaged their relationships while learning to regulate their emotions and change their most destructive behaviors. It takes time and effort. "It's very active. It's not talk therapy," Linehan says. Instead of just talking about the fact that she is always arguing with people, for example, the patient has to try to find something to agree on with someone she is arguing with.

When a close friend went in for exploratory surgery recently, her doctor told her there was nothing to worry about. In fact, he was so unconcerned, he planned to perform the surgery laparoscopically -- that is, with only minor openings. But during the surgery, he found cancer. By the time the operation was over, he had abandoned the original approach in favor of a much larger incision, removing her uterus and ovaries as well.

Maribel Pantoja sat nervously on an examination table, awaiting word from her doctor about a painful wound on her left leg. Because she speaks only Spanish, there is usually an added level of anxiety when she visits a clinic. But a new first-in-the-nation state law requiring health insurers to provide interpreters for members with limited English skills spared Pantoja the confusion of trying to communicate with her doctor Tuesday.

The state's largest for-profit health insurer is asking California physicians to look for conditions it can use to cancel their new patients' medical coverage. Blue Cross of California is sending physicians copies of health insurance applications filled out by new patients, along with a letter advising them that the company has a right to drop members who fail to disclose "material medical history," including "pre-existing pregnancies."

UCLA's neuropsychiatric hospital has banned all cellphones and laptop computers after a patient posted group photos of other patients on a social networking website, officials confirmed Monday. Dr. Thomas Strouse, medical director of the Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital, said in a statement that the decision was part of "UCLA Health System's ongoing efforts to enhance patient privacy and confidentiality in compliance with California's patient rights law."