News in brief - Sept. 25, 2006

10 medical students win AMA Foundation scholarships - Ore. institution expands publicly released quality data - FDA closes N.C. tissue bank - Washington state passes rules to boost patient safety - Age not a major factor for doing surgery, study finds

10 medical students win AMA Foundation scholarships

As part of its effort to provide medical students financial assistance, the American Medical Association Foundation recently awarded nine medical students with $10,000 scholarships and one student with a $5,000 scholarship.

The $10,000 Physicians of Tomorrow Scholarships were given to seven fourth-year medical students based on their personal commitment, scholastic achievement and financial need. Two students received the $10,000 scholarships based on other merits. The Audio Digest Foundation Award recognizes a student who is committed to mentoring or teaching; the Rock Sleyster Award recognizes a student interested in psychiatry.

The 2006 Physicians of Tomorrow Scholarships winners are:

Jonathan Amiel, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York City, Rock Sleyster Award.

Jaime Cavallo, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Audio-Digest Award.

Ivan Davis, Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine in Richmond.

David Edwards, Duke University School of Medicine in Durham, N.C.

Marie Jeoboam, Florida State University College of Medicine in Tallahassee.

Karen Morris, Yale University School of Medicine in New Haven, Conn.

Hiral Patel, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey-New Jersey Medical School in Newark.

Naima Rehman, University of Michigan Medical School in Ann Arbor.

Heather Smith, University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester.

The AMA Foundation also presented the Arthur N. Wilson, MD, Scholarship to Jessica Arasmith, a fourth-year medical student at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle.

The $5,000 scholarship is awarded annually to an outstanding medical student who graduated with academic honors from a high school in Southeast Alaska.

Ore. institution expands publicly released quality data

The Oregon Health & Science University announced last month that it would release mortality and quality performance data for all patients who receive one or more of 20 clinical services, becoming the first hospital in the state and among the first in the country to do so.

Last year, Oregon began requiring hospitals to report mortality data for a sample of patients who received at least one of eight procedures. OHSU will post the data, along with similar data from other academic health centers for comparison, at its Web site (www.ohsuhealth.com/quality_service).

Quality data through the end of 2005 that are now online show the volume of patients OHSU cared for in areas such as cardiology and vascular surgery. OHSU has met or exceeded University Health System Consortium performance targets for each.

"Health care providers must take the lead in helping the public understand what data are available, what is valuable and what we must do to improve the process by which quality is measured," Jeffrey Kirsch, MD, chair of the OHSU quality executive committee, said in a statement.

FDA closes N.C. tissue bank

The Food and Drug Administration is urging doctors to offer patients testing for HIV, hepatitis B and C viruses and syphilis if they received transplanted tissue from Donor Referral Services, a Raleigh, N.C., tissue bank. The FDA closed the firm Aug. 18, citing owner Philip Guyett with several violations, including misstating cause of death and disease risk of at least five donors. Guyett denies any wrongdoing.

The FDA announced plans to form a task force on human cell and tissue safety to strengthen its system for regulating the industry. This is the second incident the FDA has investigated this year involving firms handling body parts for medical use.

Washington state passes rules to boost patient safety

Patients seeking treatment for spider veins or laser hair removal will be safer under new rules governing "prescriptive medical devices" that Washington's Medical Quality Assurance Commission adopted in August, state health officials said.

The rules clarify that procedures such as laser hair removal are considered the practice of medicine and outline requirements for using medical lasers. The commission developed the measures out of concern that unlicensed people and physician office staff with little or no medical training were operating medical lasers.

Health officials also were concerned about a growing number of "spa clinics" that do laser hair removal and often are run by employees with no medical training and no state license. The state Dept. of Health has issued cease-and-desist orders against several operators for unlicensed practice of medicine. The new rules take effect in March 2007.

Age not a major factor for doing surgery, study finds

Researchers say patients should be less concerned about their surgeon's age and more focused on other factors, such as surgical volume, when making a choice.

The findings, published in the September Annals of Surgery, show that for some complex cardiovascular and cancer surgical procedures, surgeons older than 60 with low surgical volumes had higher patient mortality rates than did younger surgeons. But older surgeons who continued to maintain higher surgical caseloads were found to have comparable outcomes to colleagues age 41 to 50.

Researchers said the study dispels the belief that younger, less experienced surgeons are more likely to have poor surgical outcomes. Instead, they said surgeons age 40 and younger had similar patient mortality rates to those of more experienced surgeons for the eight surgical procedures studied.

"This study's results should be very encouraging not only for patients but also for younger and older surgeons whose operative skills may previously have been the subject of scrutiny," lead author Jennifer F. Waljee, MD, MPH, general surgery resident in the Dept. of Surgery at the University of Michigan Medical School, said in a statement. "The bottom line is that for most procedures, the age of the surgeon is not an important predictor of operative risk for a patient."