A.The Best Practice
for Heart Patients
Narrator: This is Science Today. Heart patients
do better at medical centers which follow the federal
Abest practice@ guidelines for congestive heart
failure. Pat Sparacino, a clinical nurse specialist
at the University of California, San Francisco says
these guidelines were developed by the Agency for
Health Care Policy and Research.
Sparacino: These guidelines are recommendations
about symptom recognition, symptom management and
the incorporation of exercise, importance of taking
drugs, the importance of low salt containing foods
to basically be able to best manage their congestive
heart failure.
Narrator: By following these guidelines,
hospital readmission rates dropped and there was
also a decrease in cost and the patient's length
of stay.
Sparacino: It also gives them some ownership
of their disease management. It becomes a true partnership,
that it isn't just the care providers, it's the
care provider and the patient and hopefully patient's
family.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa
Branin.
B. The Laboratory of the Future
Narrator: This is Science Today. A hand
held device may be the laboratory of the future.
Michael Sailor, a chemistry professor at the University
of California, San Diego says rather than having
patients undergo a barrage of expensive tests, a
bio sensor device could diagnose several deficiencies
and diseases right away. This can be done by packing
certain biological molecules onto a silicon wafer.
Sailor: You've got something sitting on
the surface of this thing that's tuned to recognize
this specific molecule. Let's say you have the AIDS
antibody, we have something on that surface that
can recognize the AIDS antibody. We take your blood
sample and put it into there and if you've got AIDS,
the color changes.
Narrator: Sailor says this silicon wafer
is similar to a pentium processor chip.
Sailor: And so what we want to do is be
able to sculpt maybe ten thousand or a hundred thousand
little analytical patches on the silicon, feed the
sample of saliva or the blood sample to the chip
and have it do the thousand or ten thousand different
analyses you want it to do and tell you what are
all the problems with this particular sample.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa
Branin.
C. Becoming Aware of Glaucoma
Narrator: This is Science Today. January
is glaucoma awareness month and therefore, a good
time for those at risk to have an annual eye exam.
Dr. Robert Weinreb of the University of California,
San Diego says those at greatest risk are the elderly.
Weinreb: After the age of seventy, for example,
there is a risk of more than five percent that you
might develop glaucoma. Other individuals who are
at risk are those with high eye pressure. African
Americans have about a four fold greater risk of
developing glaucoma and about an eight fold risk
of going blind from glaucoma.
Narrator: Glaucoma is a condition in which
the optic nerve is damaged.
Weinreb: And the damage leads to loss of
vision and possible blindness. In the earliest stages
of glaucoma, there's no obvious loss of vision to
the patient and glaucoma can only be detected with
specialized testing of vision.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa
Branin.
D. One of the Underrated Senses
Narrator: This is Science Today. If you
lost your sense of smell, would you notice it? Surprisingly,
Dr. Terence Davidson, an ear, nose and throat specialist
at the University of California, San Diego says
many times, people don't.
Davidson: It's not so well defined and it's
not well picked up and it's not so obvious. So it
takes them a while to figure it out, then they're
not sure whether to make a big deal of it.
Narrator: Davidson says it's usually people
who depend more on their noses who come in for treatment.
Davidson: The classic example is a housewife.
She knows when the baby's diapers are full, she
goes around picking up articles of clothing, giving
them a sniff to see if it goes back into the drawer
or whether it goes into the laundry. She cooks by
her nose, she cleans by her nose. They'll come in
day one when they lost their sense of smell. I assume
a chef would know immediately. Wine tasters would
know the moment the first neuron went.
Narrator: Most of the time, the loss of
smell is caused by inflammatory nasal disease, which
Davidson says is reversible. For Science Today,
I'm Larissa Branin.
E. The Future of Cartilage Tissue
Engineering
Narrator: This is Science Today. While the
concept of tissue engineering of knee cartilage
has been making waves in the press lately, bioengineer
Robert Sah of the University of California, San
Diego, says it's too soon for people to get their
hopes high.
Sah: Older people who have completely degenerate
joints think that there's a cure in the near horizon
for their totally degenerate joints and that's not
the case. I think we're fifty to one hundred years
away from that.
Narrator: Sah helped create a detailed,
mechanical blueprint of the knee cartilage which
may be valuable in engineering better matched, laboratory
grown knee cartilage.
Sah: The really wonderful thing that might
happen many, many years down the line, which some
people have a vision for, is that we'll develop
a totally synthetic, living cartilage, bone replacement
that will replace the metal and plastic prosthesis
we put into older people and will overcome some
of the limitations.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa
Branin.
