Triage

I was disturbed by the article "Help in a Heartbeat" (Nov. 21). While "telephone triage" is indeed a valuable service both for reducing needless emergency room visits and providing information to potential patients, I've been taking advantage of this service for over a decade--for free. Every emergency room has a triage nurse who is happy to come to the phone to provide advice for patients. On those few occasions when I've been in doubt, triage nurses have been there to provide guidance at no charge--saving this uninsured American from often-exorbitant emergency room fees.

YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK - The phones in the administrative building here are constantly ringing. Half a dozen rangers answer the calls: "You were here just this last weekend?" "Do you remember the area the cabin was in?" "I understand your fear. I would have the same level of anxiety. " Responding to questions about a recent outbreak of hantavirus linked to the park, the rangers rattle off information about the rodent-borne disease. Calendars, news articles and park maps cover their tables.

Amid predictions of a grim political reality for Democrats and talk of political "triage," Democratic campaigns have released a series of internal polls that show them well-positioned in seats that Republicans must win if they are to, in fact, win the House back. Here are the findings: -- In Alabama's 2nd District, Rep. Bobby Bright leads challenger Martha Roby 52% to 43%. -- In North Carolina's 8th District, Rep. Larry Kissell leads Republican Harold Johnson 48% to 36%. -- In Virginia's 2nd District, Rep. Tom Perriello trails state Sen. Robert Hurt by two points, within the margin of error.

Amid predictions of a grim political reality for Democrats and talk of political "triage," Democratic campaigns have released a series of internal polls that show them well-positioned in seats that Republicans must win if they are to, in fact, win the House back. Here are the findings: -- In Alabama's 2nd District, Rep. Bobby Bright leads challenger Martha Roby 52% to 43%. -- In North Carolina's 8th District, Rep. Larry Kissell leads Republican Harold Johnson 48% to 36%. -- In Virginia's 2nd District, Rep. Tom Perriello trails state Sen. Robert Hurt by two points, within the margin of error.

Biosite Inc. said it had received Food and Drug Administration approval to market a heart-failure blood test for Beckman Coulter Inc. The Triage test detects a marker in the blood that can help diagnose congestive heart failure within 15 minutes, San Diego-based Biosite said. The test also helps doctors diagnose the severity of heart failure, reducing unnecessary hospitalization and treatment for patients who are short of breath, and possibly saving more than $7 billion in health-care costs annually in the U.S., according to company research.

I have several concerns. First, I am not ready to allow ethicists or physicians or moralists the last word on prolonging life. I am also not ready to change our ethos regarding the sanctity of life for an economic cost benefit analysis sheet. If only 14% of a certain group of persons with stroke survive after resuscitative measures are taken that is not to be compared with artifacts devoid of life for statistical significance. Second, I believe persons of color will be concerned with criteria for DNR orders simply of history.

It was just another tragedy in family court. A young crack mother, desperate to conceal her pregnancy, had locked herself in a tenement bathroom and given birth to a three-pound boy. As she pushed, he fell to the floor and broke his skull. The mother abandoned him, like she had two previous babies. All were born addicted to crack. "Can we do anything about this woman?" asks Judge Judith Sheindlin, her voice taut with anger.

In the pantheon of life's annoyances, there's nothing quite as expletive-inducing as hitting a pothole. Potholes jar the psyche as well as the car, the bicycle and, occasionally, the feet, leaving behind a trail of broken axles, flat tires and sprained ankles. No wonder some residents of Holmby Hills were so frustrated by the craters on their streets that they threatened to secede from Los Angeles and annex themselves to Beverly Hills. A blight as well as a safety hazard, a pothole seems so simple to fix. It's not like carving into the Sepulveda Pass to widen the 405 Freeway.

Folks who don't interrupt phone conversations by shouting, "I'll call back, I'm driving into the canyon!," have little reason to fret about who emerges victorious from the upcoming television season. Whether NBC retains its No. 1 status or ABC claws out of third place rightfully concerns only a few people, most with offices in New York, Century City, Burbank and on Fairfax near Canter's delicatessen.

When you take a close-up look at the red ink gushing from the state Capitol, it becomes a very ugly sight. For starters, the problem is worse than first thought. Nonpartisan Legislative Analyst Elizabeth G. Hill last month projected a nearly $10-billion deficit spread over the current and next fiscal years. Then last week, reports leaked that the Schwarzenegger administration, with updated numbers, is projecting a $14-billion deficit. Actually, it's $14.5 billion.

Assembling a movie is a bit like emergency room triage: Some scenes survive no matter what, a few hang on for dear life, while others are pronounced dead on arrival. It's that middle category -- one day the footage is in the cut, the next day it's out -- that can dictate how well a film turns out. The five filmmakers nominated for this year's best director Oscar gathered for the Envelope Roundtable last month to discuss the complex process of moviemaking -- an often forthright conversation about the forces that can bring movies together and also tear them apart.

Dr. Huang Dong has slept maybe three hours in the last three days. There is no time to rest when hundreds of earthquake victims are still making their way to the small city hospital where Huang works. The building that was 903 Hospital remains upright, but unsafe. Patients must receive treatment outdoors, where a tent city of tarps draped over hospital beds serves as an open-air triage center. "I have never seen this much trauma, this many people screaming in pain," said Huang, 30.

When you take a close-up look at the red ink gushing from the state Capitol, it becomes a very ugly sight. For starters, the problem is worse than first thought. Nonpartisan Legislative Analyst Elizabeth G. Hill last month projected a nearly $10-billion deficit spread over the current and next fiscal years. Then last week, reports leaked that the Schwarzenegger administration, with updated numbers, is projecting a $14-billion deficit. Actually, it's $14.5 billion.

The closure of Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital's emergency room means that millions of dollars in state funds spent directly on healthcare in South Los Angeles could be snapped up by hospitals in other parts of California. Residents, through no fault of their own, would be hit twice -- first, by the county's inability to keep their hospital operating competently, and now, by the diversion of more than $100 million in healthcare funding. Sen. Sheila Kuehl (D-Santa Monica), Sen.

Peter Reynaud is a guy who likes to be in the thick of it. Shunning a conventional practice after medical school, he worked in New York public hospitals in Spanish Harlem. He immunized babies in Chiapas, Mexico, and then treated bacterial skin disease in Guinea. After agreeing to go to the Democratic Republic of Congo for the aid group Doctors Without Borders, he was vacationing at his brother's place in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina hit.

Dennis and Ken Ortiz are in the business of disaster. The Ortiz brothers, both captains for the Los Angeles County Fire Department, run a small business that provides tools emergency crews can use to turn chaos into order. "What's bad for everybody else is good for our business," said Dennis, the older of the brothers and co-founder of Pomona-based Disaster Management Systems Inc.

When organizers of a massive free clinic scrambled this week to find volunteer doctors to treat thousands of needy patients at the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena, the Vaisman family answered the call. Dr. Boris Vaisman, 34, who practices with his mother in Woodland Hills, recruited his father, who practices in Studio City, and his brother, who will graduate from medical school in June. Dr. Sofia Vaisman, 61, treated women, some of whom had never seen a gynecologist and did not know what a mammogram was. Dr. Mark Vaisman, 61, performed general medical exams.

Sitting in the driver's seat of a smashed car, Julie Messina, 24, laid her bloodied head on the steering wheel and closed her eyes. Next to her, a semiconscious 13-year-old, Tom Perschler, reclined in the passenger seat and hung his arm limply at his side. As the first Newport Beach fire engine arrived at the scene on Avocado Avenue, three firefighters closed in on the mangled car and an overturned bus full of victims. And then it was over.

Inside one South Gate High School classroom on Wednesday, students chatted and strolled in and out while their substitute teacher sat, engrossed in a novel. In another class of 40 students, a boy held his backpack while searching for a seat among 38 desks. Last week, a senior algebra class -- also staffed by a substitute -- watched the comedy "Big Daddy."

Navy medical officials have launched a study to determine how well their system for treating battlefield casualties functioned during the November assault by Marines and Navy SEALs on this formerly rebel-held city, the most intense urban combat for American troops since the Vietnam War.