Mom in China avoids jail after killing mentally ill daughter

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Posted on 31st October 2008 by Gordon Johnson in Brain Injury

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Date: 10/31/2008

BEIJING (AP) _ A Chinese mother who admitted poisoning and smothering her mentally ill daughter to death has been spared a jail sentence, state media reported Friday.

Li Daohong fed her 20-year-old daughter, who suffered from brain paralysis, more than 200 sleeping pills in a Beijing hotel before smothering her with towels and a quilt while she was asleep, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

The case was a rare public look at the difficulties of caring for the mentally ill in China, a subject that remains taboo in much of the country.

A Beijing court gave Li, 47, a villager from eastern Jiangsu province, a three-year jail sentence suspended for five years, Xinhua said. That means if she shows good behavior for the five years she will not have to serve the sentence.

“The court is convinced of the fact that the defendant has spent great energy and money on the victim, and the mounting psychological burden proved unbearable for her,” the judge said, according to Xinhua.

Li had spent all her money taking her daughter around China seeking treatment.

The family depended on the wages of Li’s husband, who repairs bicycles, Xinhua said, and could not afford a lawyer.

“I was afraid I would no longer be able to look after my daughter as I’m getting old,” Xinhua quoted Li as saying in court. Li’s neighbors had sent a joint letter to the court asking for mercy, it said.


Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.

Marshals arrest brother of mummified Ky. woman

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Posted on 29th October 2008 by Gordon Johnson in Brain Injury

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Date: 10/29/2008

GEORGETOWN, Ky. (AP) _ A Kentucky man arrested after police found the mummified remains of his disabled sister in the trunk of his car was set to appear in court Wednesday for an extradition hearing.

Timothy Allen Brown, 36, was arrested by U.S. Marshals in St. Louis on Tuesday night, said Georgetown Police Chief Greg Reeves.

The severely decomposed body of 31-year-old Penny Brown was discovered Friday after police towed the car from St. Louis to Kentucky. They had received complaints that it had been on the street for several days.

Brown has been charged with abuse or neglect of an adult, a felony in Kentucky, Reeves said. He could face additional federal charges in Kentucky for allegedly cashing his sister’s disability checks, Reeves said Wednesday.

Timothy Brown signed his wheelchair-dependent sister out of a nursing home in 2006, and the remains may have been in his apartment for two years, police said. Officials have said they may not be able to determine how she died.

Lee Messmer, a U.S. Marshal’s assistant chief deputy in St. Louis, said Brown had been in the St. Louis area probably for a couple of weeks. He was arrested Tuesday night at a library, Messmer said.

Brown’s car was found last week when police responded to a complaint that it had been on a street for several days. Police had the car towed more than 300 miles back to Kentucky where they found the badly decomposed body wrapped in quilts and plastic.

Reeves said a local Kentucky police officer had visited Timothy Brown’s apartment Sept. 20 as part of a child welfare case involving his 8-year-old son, who was taken from the residence after social service workers found deplorable conditions. Reeves said the boy mentioned that he hadn’t seen his aunt “in some time,” and was not allowed into her room.

Reeves said officers found evidence of decomposition in the room that matched the remains in the trunk.


Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.

Egyptian boy, kicked by teacher, dies in hospital

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Posted on 28th October 2008 by Gordon Johnson in Brain Injury

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Date: 10/28/2008

By MAGGIE MICHAEL
Associated Press Writer

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) _ An Egyptian security official says police detained a teacher in the northern coastal city of Alexandria after one of his pupils — a schoolboy — died in hospital, after allegedly being hit by the teacher.

The official says the city prosecutor ordered the detention of 23-year-old math teacher, Haitham Abdel Hamid, on Monday.

The boy reportedly collapsed and fell into a coma after the teacher kicked him in the classroom, allegedly because the boy did not complete his homework. The boy died later in hospital.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to media.

Corporal punishment is common in overcrowded Egyptian schools, where teachers get meager salaries and lack sufficient training.

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.

Wisconsin Brain Injury Association Seeking Grant Reviewers

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Posted on 27th October 2008 by Gordon Johnson in Brain Injury

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10/27/08 From the Brain Injury Association of Wisconsin (BIAW):

The Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) is looking for new
and experienced objective grant reviewers with expertise in traumatic brain
injury. HRSA is looking specifically for individuals with specialized
education, knowledge, and experience in the area of traumatic brain injury
to apply to be a HRSA Grant Reviewer for its Maternal and Child Health
Bureau. Individuals with TBI and family members are especially needed.

As a Grant Reviewer you will assist HRSA in objectively evaluating
applications against established criteria. These competitive applications
are being submitted by State TBI Programs around the country. If you are
interested in being a Grant Reviewer, please send a note expressing your
interest along with a CV (curriculum vitae) to:

Captain Janie Martin-Heppel
Director, Federal Traumatic Brain Injury Program
DHHS/HRSA/Maternal and Child Health Bureau
Room 18-A-18, the Parklawn Building
301-443-2259; fax: 301-443-8604
jmartin-heppel@hrsa.gov

An email note with the required information is also acceptable. If you do
not have a CV, a paragraph or two about your qualifications will suffice.
For example, if you are a family member or caregiver and you don’t have a
CV, you could start with: “I have been a caregiver for my son who has a
TBI for the past five years…”

Questions should be directed to Captain Janie Martin-Heppel.


Thank you,
Brain Injury Association of Wisconsin

Hospitals ease ER crowding with ward beds in halls

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Posted on 26th October 2008 by Gordon Johnson in Brain Injury

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Date: 10/26/2008


By CARLA K. JOHNSON
Associated Press Writer

CHICAGO (AP) _ There’s no phone and no television. Only a screen offers privacy. But heart patient Edward Gray understands why the hospital put him in a cardiac unit hallway.

“They sent me up here to make room for other emergency patients,” Gray, 78, said last week from his bed in the hall of a New York area hospital. “This is the way things are in hospitals.”

It may not sound like ideal health care, but hospital officials nationwide are being urged to consider hallway medicine as a way to ease emergency department crowding, and some are trying it.

Leading the way is Stony Brook University Medical Center at Stony Brook, N.Y., where a study found that no harm was caused by moving emergency room patients to upper-floor hallways when they were ready for admission.

The study’s lead author says all hospitals should look at the program’s success.

“This is yet another battle cry for hospitals to get off their duffs and stop stacking people knee deep in the emergency department,” said Dr. Peter Viccellio, who is clinical director of the hospital’s emergency department.

He is to present the study’s findings Tuesday at a meeting of the American College of Emergency Physicians in Chicago.

Crowding is a hospital-wide problem that has been handed off to emergency departments, Viccellio said. His idea hands the problem back to the entire hospital.

Before the change, when his hospital filled up, patients were admitted but held in the ER in a common practice called boarding. On busy days, “things would grind to a halt and people would wait to be seen,” Viccellio said. Infectious patients would wait in the ER’s hallway for isolation rooms to open up elsewhere in the hospital.

Holding patients in ERs can cause deaths, doctors say. In a 2007 survey of nearly 1,500 emergency doctors, 13 percent said they personally experienced a patient dying as a result of boarding in the emergency department. The survey was conducted by the American College of Emergency Physicians.

The new study found slightly fewer deaths and intensive care unit admissions in the hallway patients compared to the standard bed patients. That was no surprise, Viccellio said, because the protocol calls for giving the first available rooms to the sickest patients. Intensive care patients never go to hallways.

The study is based on four years of Stony Brook’s experience with more than 2,000 patients admitted to hallways from the ER.

Other hospitals resist the idea, doctors say. Dr. Michael Carius, who heads the emergency department at Norwalk Hospital in Norwalk, Conn., would like it adopted at his hospital. But nurses and government regulators have resisted, citing safety issues, “as though the emergency department hallway is a safer environment,” he said in frustration.

“When you’re full of admitted patients, you’re no longer an emergency department, you’re just a holding area,” Carius said.

In Texas, all it took to convince nurses at Harris Methodist Fort Worth Hospital was a tour of the ER, said Barbara VanWart, emergency nurse manager.

“They could see the problem and help us make things happen because now it’s before their eyes,” VanWart said. The hospital started its hallway protocol in 2005.

Dr. Kirk Jensen of the nonprofit Institute for Healthcare Improvement in Cambridge, Mass., said the best reason to adopt the concept is the way it gets the whole hospital involved in finding rooms more quickly for admitted patients.

“It’s out of sight, out of mind, even if they know that patients are there in the emergency department,” Jensen said. With patients in their own hallways, “they get a lot more creative and aggressive with workflow practices.”

When Stony Brook began the hallway practice, the staff noticed “the miracle of the elevator,” said Carolyn Santora, who heads the hospital’s patient safety efforts. Somehow, rooms became available by the time hallway-bound emergency patients made it upstairs, she said.

Nurses hate seeing patients in their hallways, Santora said, and that’s fine with her.

“I want them to hate it. I want them to do everything to expedite flow to get the patient out of hallway.”

Gray, the hallway patient at Stony Brook, came to the ER with chest pains and was stabilized before being sent upstairs. He is a retired nurse and said hospital crowding deserves attention from lawmakers.

“I wish the $700 billion went for hospitals, roads and bridges and not to bail out those folks on Wall Street,” he said.

___

On the Net:

ACEP: http://www.acep.org/

Stony Brook: http://www.stonybrookmedicalcenter.org/

Institute for Healthcare Improvement: http://www.ihi.org/ihi/

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.

NM woman faces eviction over medical marijuana use

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Posted on 24th October 2008 by Gordon Johnson in Brain Injury

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Date: 10/23/2008 1:26 PM

SILVER CITY, N.M. (AP) _ A woman was told to move out of her apartment when the landlord discovered she has marijuana for medical use.

Bobbie Wooten, 47, uses a wheelchair because she was paralyzed from the waist down in a car crash several years ago and suffers severe spasms. She joined the state’s medical marijuana program when it went into effect last year.

A management representative for Silver Cliffs apartments did a surprise inspection Tuesday and spotted two marijuana plants she has for medical use under a state license, Wooten said. She said the representative returned a short time later with a notice that she had three days to move.

A spokesman for the Arizona realty company that manages the Silver City complex told the Las Cruces Sun-News that the eviction is within the terms of the lease.

“My lease provides for a drug-free environment,” said David Kotin of Kay-Kay Realty. “Obviously, she is in violation of my lease.”

Wooten, who has lived in the complex for 6½ years, said Thursday that managers have since asked for a copy of her state license for the marijuana. She said she hasn’t looked for another place yet.

“There aren’t that many places that are wheelchair accessible,” said Wooten.

State Health Department spokeswoman Deborah Busemeyer said patients in the medican marijuana program can possess up to four mature plants, 12 seedlings and up to six ounces — enough marijuana for a three-month supply.

“We have never had a case like this where someone was told to move out,” Busemeyer said.

The state law that took effect in July 2007 allows patients to be licensed to take marijuana for pain or other symptoms of specified debilitating illnesses such as cancer, multiple sclerosis and spasms associated with spinal cord injury.

___

On the Net:

Health Department regulations: http://www.nmhealth.org/marijuana.html

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.

Magnet device aims to treat depression patients

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Posted on 21st October 2008 by Gordon Johnson in Brain Injury

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Date: 10/20/2008 5:05 PM

By LAURAN NEERGAARD
AP Medical Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) _ The government has approved the first noninvasive brain stimulator to treat depression — a device that beams magnetic pulses through the skull.

If it sounds like science-fiction, well, those woodpecker-like pulses trigger small electrical charges that spark brain cells to fire. Yet it doesn’t cause the risks of surgically implanted electrodes or the treatment of last resort, shock therapy.

Called transcranial magnetic stimulation or TMS, this gentler approach isn’t for everyone. The Food and Drug Administration approved Neuronetics Inc.’s NeuroStar therapy specifically for patients who had no relief from their first antidepressant, offering them a different option than trying pill after pill.

“We’re opening up a whole new area of medicine,” says Dr. Mark George of the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, who helped pioneer use of TMS in depression. “There’s a whole field now that’s moving forward of noninvasive electrical stimulation of the brain.”

While there’s a big need for innovative approaches — at least one in five depression patients is treatment-resistant — the question is just how much benefit TMS offers.

The FDA cleared the prescription-only NeuroStar based on data that found patients did modestly better when treated with TMS than when they unknowingly received a sham treatment that mimicked the magnet. It was a study fraught with statistical questions that concerned the agency’s own scientific advisers.

For a more clear answer, the National Institutes of Health has an independent study under way now that tracks 260 patients and may have initial results as early as next year.

Quantifying the benefit is key, considering the price tag. TMS is expected to cost $6,000 to $10,000, depending on how many treatments a patient needs, says Dr. Philip Janicak of Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, who helped lead the NeuroStar study. That’s far more expensive than medication yet thousands of dollars cheaper than invasive depression devices.

Neuroscientists have been using TMS for years as a research tool in brain studies. Zap a powerful magnet over a certain spot on the head — where motion is controlled — and someone’s arm can suddenly, involuntarily, lash out. Beyond the “wow” factor, magnetized pulses were triggering brain activity.

The question was how to harness that activity in a way that might improve disease. TMS also is being studied in stroke rehabilitation and other brain disorders.

“Nobody thought this would work; it was a crazy idea. I had to do it at 6 in the morning before the real scientists came in,” South Carolina’s George laughs as he recalls work he began in 1993.

But, “the brain is an electrical organ,” George adds, explaining the rationale. “Electricity is the currency of the brain. It’s how the brain does what it does.”

For depression, psychiatrists aim the magnet at the left front of the head, the prefrontal cortex. Since everyone’s brain is different, they first zap the top of the head to find a patient’s motor-control region, and then carefully move 5 centimeters forward. Then, the NeuroStar beams about 3,000 pulses a minute during a 40-minute treatment, done about five times a week for up to six weeks.

The theory: Stimulating brain cells in the prefrontal cortex triggers a chain reaction that also stimulates deeper brain regions involved with mood.

TMS did prove to be very safe: Patients in the NeuroStar study suffered no seizures or memory problems like shock therapy can cause, or other reactions throughout the body. The chief complaint from the sessions was headaches.

The FDA cleared the device after focusing just on a subset of the patients initially enrolled — 164 who had failed one antidepressant during their current bout of depression, not those who were more severely treatment-resistant.

What’s a modest benefit? About 24 percent who got TMS scored significantly better on standard depression measures after six weeks, compared with 12 percent who got the sham, says Janicak. That’s about as well as patients respond to a single antidepressant, he says.

Some reported remarkable improvement.

“One day it was like a light switch went off,” says Steve Newman, 60, of Washington, D.C., who enrolled in the NeuroStar study at the University of Pennsylvania in 2005.

Newman had suffered repeated bouts of depression since he was a teenager, and drug after drug barely blunted it. He was considering shock therapy when he heard about TMS.

After two weeks of treatment, Newman was wondering if he was getting the sham — when suddenly, he started feeling lots better, and doctors spotted a corresponding major improvement in his depression measurements.

“I was awake. I was there,” says Newman who said he still gets what he calls a “maintenance dose” of TMS about once a month.

___

EDITOR’s NOTE — Lauran Neergaard covers health and medical issues for The Associated Press in Washington.

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.

Brain’s reaction to yummy food may predict weight

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Posted on 17th October 2008 by Gordon Johnson in Brain Injury

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Date: 10/16/2008 2:04 PM

By LAURAN NEERGAARD
AP Medical Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) _ Drink a milkshake and the pleasure center in your brain gets a hit of happy — unless you’re overweight.

It sounds counterintuitive. But scientists who watched young women savor milkshakes inside a brain scanner concluded that when the brain doesn’t sense enough gratification from food, people may overeat to compensate.

The small but first-of-a-kind study even could predict who would pile on pounds during the next year: Those who harbored a gene that made their brain’s yum factor even more sluggish.

“The more blunted your response to the milkshake taste, the more likely you are to gain weight,” said Dr. Eric Stice, a senior scientist at the Oregon Research Institute who led the work, published in Friday’s edition of the journal Science.

A healthy diet and plenty of exercise are the main factors in whether someone is overweight. But scientists have long known that genetics also play a major role in obesity — and one big culprit is thought to be dopamine, the brain chemical that’s key to sensing pleasure.

Eating can temporarily boost dopamine levels. Previous brain scans have suggested that the obese have fewer dopamine receptors in their brains than lean people. And a particular gene version, called Taq1A1, is linked to fewer dopamine receptors.

“This paper takes it one step farther,” said Dr. Nora Volkow of the National Institutes of Health, a dopamine specialist who has long studied the obesity link. “It takes the gene associated with greater vulnerability for obesity and asks the question why. What is it doing to the way the brain is functioning that would make a person more vulnerable to compulsively eat food and become obese?”

It’s “very elegant work,” she added.

First, Stice’s team had to figure out how to study the brain’s immediate reactions to food. Moving inside an MRI machine skews its measurements, which ruled out letting the women slurp up the milkshakes. Yale University neuroscientist Dana Small solved that problem, with a special syringe that would squirt a small amount of milkshake or, for comparison, a tasteless solution into the mouth without study participants moving. They were told when to swallow, so researchers could coordinate the scans with that small motion.

Then they recruited volunteers, 43 female college students ages 18 to 22 and 33 teenagers, ages 14 to 18. Body mass index calculations showed the young women spanned the range from very skinny to obese.

Brain scanning showed that a key region called the dorsal striatum — a dopamine-rich pleasure center — became active when they tasted the milkshake, but not when they tasted the comparison liquid that just mimicked saliva.

Yet that brain region was far less active in overweight people than in lean people, and in those who carry that A1 gene variant, the researchers reported. Moreover, women with that gene version were more likely to gain weight over the coming year.

It’s a small study with few gene carriers, and thus must be verified, Volkow stressed.

Still, it could have important implications. Volkow, who heads NIH’s National Institute of Drug Abuse, notes that “dopamine is not just about pleasure.” It also plays a role in conditioning — dopamine levels affect drug addiction — and the ability to control impulses.

She wonders if instead of overeating to compensate for the lack of pleasure — Stice’s conclusion — the study really might show that these people with malfunctioning dopamine in fact eat because they’re impulsive.

Regardless, most people’s tongues find a milkshake quite tasty; the brain reaction is subconscious.

But if doctors could determine who carries the at-risk gene, children especially could be steered toward “recreational sports or other things that give them satisfaction and pleasure and dopamine that aren’t food … and not get their brains used to having crappy food,” said Stice, a clinical psychologist who has long studied obesity.

“Don’t get your brain used to it,” he said of non-nutritious food. “I would not buy Ho Hos for lunch every day because the more you eat, the more you crave.”

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.

Parents of boy who shot himself plead not guilty

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Posted on 14th October 2008 by Gordon Johnson in Brain Injury

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Date: 10/14/2008 4:18 PM

NORWICH, Conn. (AP) _ The parents of a 2-year-old boy who died after accidentally shooting himself with a gun he found at home pleaded not guilty to charges related to the death.

Jason Matteau, 27, and Rebecca Matteau, 24, of Jewett City, were arraigned Tuesday in Norwich Superior Court on charges of negligent storage of a firearm and risk of injury to a minor. If convicted of both felonies, they face up to 15 years in prison.

Their son, Wyatt, died Aug. 28, about two hours after he shot himself in the head with his father’s .40-caliber handgun, state police said. The Matteaus were at their apartment with their son and infant daughter at the time, but Wyatt was alone in a room when the gun fired, troopers said.

His mother had told him to stay away from the gun moments before the accident, warning him that it was “Bad boo boo’s,” according to a police report.

Connecticut law makes it a crime to store loaded firearms in an area where the owner reasonably should know that someone under 16 could find them.

After the accident, officials removed the couple’s daughter from their custody and placed her with a relative.

The parents declined comment as they left the courthouse. Their lawyers, William H. Paetzold and Christopher McCarthy, said they were preparing for the case and declined further comment.

The couple posted bail and were scheduled to return to court Nov. 19.

___

Information from: Norwich Bulletin, http://www.norwichbulletin.com, and The Day, http://www.theday.com.

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.

Turkey apologizes for inmate beating death

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Posted on 14th October 2008 by Gordon Johnson in Brain Injury

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Date: 10/14/2008 10:01 AM

Turkey apologizes for inmate beating death

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) _ In a rare gesture, Turkey’s justice minister apologized Tuesday to the family of an inmate who was allegedly beaten to death in Istanbul and said 19 prison workers have been suspended in connection with the killing.

Human rights groups said 29-year-old Engin Ceber was severely beaten by officers as he was taken into custody and later held in jail. He died Saturday in a hospital from a brain hemorrhage.

“I am apologizing to his family and relatives on behalf of my government and the state,” Justice Minister Mehmet Ali Sahin said. “It has been decided to suspend 19 prison personnel who might have responsibilities in his death.”

Sahin said an investigation determined that Ceber had suffered “ill treatment” by personnel at Istanbul’s Metris Prison. He said those responsible would be punished.

Ceber was also allegedly beaten by police officers before being transferred to Metris. The Interior Ministry launched a separate investigation Tuesday into that allegation.

Ceber was detained late last month while protesting that police officers have not been brought to justice for allegedly shooting and paralyzing a youth selling a left-wing publication last year.

Allegations of torture by security forces have long stained Turkey’s human rights record. Turkey has announced a “zero-tolerance” policy against torture, but human rights groups say offenders often remain unpunished.

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.
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