Research Reports

Some advances on the frontiers of medicine as reported last week to the A.M.A.: P:Anesthesia for major surgery is usually a complex procedure to kill pain, induce sleep and relax the muscles, and needs half a dozen chemicals. From the Brooklyn VA Hospital, Drs. Henry I. Lipson and Henry R. Bradford reported that they can achieve all three results more simply by giving a narcotic, alpha-prodine, in combination with a narcotic antagonist to cut down the danger of arresting the breathing mechanism. In 78 cases of major surgery (including 22 in the abdomen, 5 in the heart, 21 in the brain and 10 in the chest) and 146 cases of minor surgery, they got by in 84 cases with no other anesthetic, and used only a local in 103. A main advantage of the method: it induces a light "sleep state," from which the patient arouses quickly. P:Compounds of salicylic acid, para-aminobenzoic acid, tannic acid and their derivatives absorb the sun's skin-burning rays, said the University of Chicago's Dermatologist Stephen Rothman, and they can be used in anti-sunburn lotions. Also, they permit tanning without burning. As some South Pacific veterans will attest, antimalarial drugs such as Atabrine also protect against sunburn when taken by mouth.

P:I It is doubtful that any treatment so far devised for chronic lymphocytic leukemia (a form of leukemia that affects older adults) prolongs the patient's life, said Marquette University's Dr. Anthony V. Pisciotta, but it is possible to prolong useful life by transfusions, X ray and drug treatments which reduce unsightly tumor masses and control anemia. Two effective drugs: T.E.M. and a new one named chlorambucil.

P:Parasitic diseases once thought peculiar to the south and the tropics are spreading north, reported the University of Illinois' Drs. Carroll L. Birch and Basil P. Anast. Mass migrations from south to north have carried with them hookworm, whipworm and ascarides. Immigrants in the thousands from the West Indies have brought the parasites of schistosomiasis and filariasis. Hookworm, whipworm and Schistosoma mansoni began to appear in northern cities only in 1950; years ahead of them were the amoeba (a cause of chronic dysentery) and pinworm. Estimated schistosomiasis cases in New York City, 70,000; in Chicago, 2,200. P:When a small boy swallowed a nail which lodged in the jejunum (second part of the small bowel), Atlanta's Dr. Murdock Equen made him swallow a tiny but powerful Alnico permanent magnet attached to a string. When the magnet grabbed the nail, Dr. Equen pulled the string and slowly worked the nail up through the digestive tract and out the boy's mouth. In seven years he took assorted hardware from the insides of 16 other youngsters, but then met a stubborn case where a nail had been stuck in a boy's duodenum for three weeks. The little magnet would not budge it. So the doctor got two bigger magnets, placed them over the boy's body above the little one, and thus gave it their added pull. By moving them over a snaky course following the loops of the duodenum and stomach, he got his nail.

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