Surgery News: November 2006 Archives

Thirty years ago in America the consensus was a 35-year-old person was middle-aged. Thirty years later that same person can still claim to be middle-aged, according to a new survey released on Monday.

Global research group AC Nielsen surveyed people in 42 countries and found 60 percent of Americans, the world's biggest consumers of cosmetic surgery and anti-aging skincare, believe their sixties are the new middle age.

Cosmetic surgery is altering not just how people look but how they feel by changing perceptions of middle age.

With time -- and medical help -- slipped disc pain gets better. But disc surgery is faster and works better for bad pain, a large U.S. study finds.

The study shows that patients with a "slipped" or "ruptured" disc -- what doctors call a herniated disc --won't get worse or become paralyzed if they don't have surgery. Instead, they can expect to get better over time.

But when patients don't want to wait, surgery can mean a quick end to excruciating pain, says study researcher William A. Abdu, MD, medical director of the spine center at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, in Lebanon, N.H.

PDL BioPharma, the Fremont, Calif.- based biopharmaceutical company, said that Swiss Roche will discontinue its agreement with PDL to jointly develop and commercialize daclizumab for organ transplant patients on longer-term maintenance therapy.

The co-development agreement between PDL and Roche will formally terminate in May 2007.

Roche made this decision subsequent to a periodic internal review of its development programs.

CHICAGO (Reuters) - One dose of an antibiotic just before surgery is as good as several spread over 24 hours to fight infections at the operation site, saving money and easing fears about bacterial resistance, a study said on Monday.

While guidelines in recent years have promoted the one-dose concept as the most effective, many surgeons have continued to use a broader approach, said the report from Hospital Sao Francisco, in Ribeirao Preto, Brazil.

Doctors there said they examined infection rates for more than 12,000 patients who had surgery in 2002 and 2003, roughly half of them after a one-dose protocol using a narrow-spectrum antibiotic was begun.

HealthDay News -- Despite decades of controversy over the dangers of silicone breast implants, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Friday lifted a 14-year ban on their commercial use.

The FDA gave approval to two companies, Allergan Inc., of Irvine Calif., and Mentor Corp, of Santa Barbara, Calif., to market the implants to all women aged 22 and older. Until now, women have only been allowed access to the implants as part of research studies.

"In 1992 the FDA required manufacturers to stop selling silicone gel-filled breast implants because of lack of data to support marketing approval," Dr. Daniel Schultz, director of the FDA's Center for Devices and Radiological Health, said during a late afternoon news conference.