News in brief - April 18, 2005

New Nebraska doctors to be fingerprinted - Organ transplant record set in 2004 - Anatomy professor shortage - 20 more OxyContin cases dismissed

New Nebraska doctors to be fingerprinted

Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman has signed a law that requires criminal background checks of doctors seeking medical licenses in the state.

The Nebraska State Patrol will fingerprint physicians and submit the prints to the FBI for a national criminal history check. Applicants must pay the $33 cost of the process and authorize release of the background check to the state's Dept. of Health and Human Services Regulation and Licensure.

At least 19 states have laws that allow state medical boards to conduct fingerprint and criminal background checks of medical license applicants. While some states routinely fingerprint and investigate all new applicants, others only conduct reviews when an application raises suspicion.

Organ transplant record set in 2004

A record 27,025 Americans received organ transplants in 2004, the U.S. Dept. of Health & Human Services reported in March. Of those transplants, 20,035 organs came from 7,150 deceased donors and a record 6,990 organs came from living donors.

The totals represented an approximately 11% increase in transplants over 2003 figures. That marks the second-highest annual increase since national records collection began in 1987.

The United Network for Organ Sharing cited HHS's Health Resources and Services Administration's "Organ Donation Breakthrough Collaborative" as having a positive impact on the upward trend. The program takes the best practices of hospitals with high-donation rates and replicates them elsewhere.

The Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network reported that 6,228 people died in 2004 waiting for an organ. That was 283 fewer than the 2003 total. There were 87,856 Americans on the organ transplant waiting list as of March 31, according to UNOS.

Preliminary information from OPTN indicates that the number of kidney transplants increased more than 5% in 2004 and liver transplants increased nearly 9%.

Anatomy professor shortage

Medical schools nationwide are facing a shortage of qualified faculty to teach gross anatomy, according to an article in the April Academic Medicine. A 2002 survey found that more than 80% of medical school department chairs had difficulty recruiting faculty to teach the class.

One of the reasons, the authors said, is that potential instructors were avoiding teaching during their postdoctoral years because there is a perception that research contributions are valued over teaching efforts. There are enough qualified people in the pipeline to reverse the shortage, but the academic community needs to provide incentives to encourage new faculty members to teach gross anatomy when they make the transition from postdoctoral fellows to junior faculty members. An online abstract of the article is available. (www.academicmedicine.org/cgi/content/abstract/80/4/349)

20 more OxyContin cases dismissed

Twenty lawsuits in Texas seeking to hold the makers of OxyContin responsible for people's addiction to the painkiller were dismissed last month. That brings the total number of cases dismissed or withdrawn by patients to more than 300.

Plaintiffs began filing lawsuits against Purdue Pharma LP in April 2001. Since then, 306 cases have been dismissed or withdrawn. Another 290 lawsuits are still pending.