Progress Reports

Among the progress reports heard at the A.M.A. convention:

P:George Washington University's Dr. Benjamin Manchester has piled up evidence that anti-clotting drugs help to prolong the lives of heart-attack victims by preventing subsequent attacks: in five years only 20% of patients so treated died, 14% of them from heart attacks, while in a comparison group, untreated, 53% died and 60% had further attacks. Cardiologist Manchester also reported on a new anti-clotting drug, Sintrom, valuable because it can be taken by mouth in small doses and works fast.

P:A victory in the battle against grippe-like diseases was reported by the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research. New recruits tossed into melting-pot basic training centers are especially subject to infections caused by adenoviruses* (one man in ten has to be hospitalized). A new vaccine developed at Walter Reed and tested at Fort Leonard Wood, Mo. cut down the attack rate of all upper-respiratory infections by 57%, and of those specifically attributed to adenoviruses by 90%.

P:Women's emotional problems after childbirth--long dignified with the name "postpartum psychosis"--are not peculiar to this period and not necessarily the result of childbirth, reported psychiatrists of the New York Hospital's Westchester Division: they are essentially the same as problems that women may have at any time of life. If they happen to follow childbirth, it is because the difficulties of this period serve as "the last straw"--but any other stressful situation might have the same effect.

P:A pocket-sized, 2-lb. gadget that can serve as a resuscitator, inhalator or anesthesia machine was described by Western Reserve University's Dr. Robert A. Hingson. Already used in more than 7,000 cases for short-term (five to 15 min.) anesthesia, it delivers a nonexplosive mixture of cyclopropane, oxygen and helium. Patients thus anesthetized have had fractures set, babies delivered by high forceps, and kidneys removed. Dr. Hingson has made it work at 12,000 ft. in the Andes, and medical student volunteers have used it as an inhalator to escape noxious gases.

*Viruses so named because they were found in adenoids. They cause diseases intermediate in severity between the common cold and influenza.

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