GenNews

 

If you have been recently diagnosed with breast cancer and are feeling alone, call the American Cancer Society. The agency’s Reach to Recovery program offers one-on-one home visitation support by a breast cancer survivor. Talk to someone who has coped with a breast cancer diagnosis. For information, please call Michelle Wolf at 203/563-0740.

Are you looking for support as you recover from a heart attack? Need some advice from other parents of twins? Would you benefit from a prostate cancer survivors support group? Waterbury Hospital is providing information on local support groups, accessible through the Internet. Area residents with computer access can now log on to www.waterburyhospital.com and view an updated list of clubs and support groups and their meeting schedules. Most also list a contact person and telephone number.

Waterbury Hospital’s Laboratory has been awarded a two-year accreditation by the commission on Laboratory Accreditation of the College of American Pathologists (CAP) based on the results of a recent on-site inspection. The laboratory’s directors, Thomas P. Anderson, MD and Carmen Serafino, were notified of the national recognition Monday and were congratulated for the “excellence of services being provided.”

Early results from a new study on the rate of recovery from knee injury show that patients who are highly stressed recover more slowly from their injuries than those with lower stress levels. Women also seem to heal more slowly from their knee injuries, according to the preliminary reports in the study that is examining non-surgical aspects of how patients at Yale-New Haven Hospital recover from arthroscopic knee and anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) reconstructive surgery. The study, conducted by doctors at the Yale Sports Medicine Center and Yale-New Haven Hospital, is one of the first to closely follow the non-surgical elements of the knee injuries that are most frequent among athletes. The study includes about 100 patients, both so-called “weekend athletes” and college athletes.

Interventional Radiologists Provide Alternative to Surgery

Yale-New Haven Hospital’s new Interventional Radiology Suite allows the treatment of disease processes that would normally require extensive surgery. As opposed to open surgery, interventional radiology procedures are often minimally traumatic and can usually be preformed with conscious sedation, which consists of an intravenous sedative and pain medication. Patients can often go home the day of the procedure. By using catheters and stents, interventional radiologists can treat diseased blood vessels. Catheters can also be used to shrink fibroid tumors through a process known as embolization, providing an alternative to hysterectomy.

The adult echocardiography laboratory at Yale-New Haven Hospital recently earned accreditation from the Intersocietal Commission for the Accreditation of Echocardiography Laboratories. The echo lab provides the most frequently used images used in the diagnosis of cardiac function, valvular heart disease and cardiovascular disease. More than 6,200 patients are seen in the lab each year, which is under the direction of medical director Dr Carl Jaffe.

Echocardiography is available 24 hours a day at Yale-New Haven and often provides the critical information needed by the trauma team of doctors and nurses in the Emergency Department, which is a Level I emergency trauma center.