Chennai,India

When three-year-old Shiva swallowed a sewing machine needle, an X-ray showed that it had entered the boy’s right lung. A medical team at the Institute of Child Health (ICH) in Egmore succeeded in removing it after a 90-minute surgery a week ago. The boy is safe and will be discharged soon.

Shiva had swallowed the needle when he was playing at his grandfather’s house at Kalakkad in Tirunelveli district. When he was taken to a private hospital, the doctors found that the needle had slipped to the lowest lobe of the right lung and removal would be difficult. The case was referred to a tertiary care centre and the family brought Shiva to the ICH. Luckily, the blunt end of the needle was facing the lung tissue and had not caused injury.

S.V. Senthilnathan, professor of paediatric surgery, said that the ICH was equipped with bronchoscopes and pulmonoscopes small enough to insert into the trachea of a three-year-old. “On two occasions, doctors tried to remove the needle using a bronchoscope as surgery could be avoided. But the needle had slipped very low down the lung,” he said.

Apart from cough, Shiva did not suffer from pain but the needle could cause infection and other complications if not removed at the earliest. Finally, the doctors decided on thorocotomy, a surgery to reach into the lung. The operation was done on October 25. The medical team that performed the surgery included Prof. Philip Chandran and Assistant Professors Muthukumaran and Mohan Kumar.

Dr. Shantha Parthiban and her team were in charge of anaesthesia, a tricky procedure as the surgery was on the lung.

As Shiva sleeps soundly on her lap, his mother Esakiammal shows the thick needle that he had swallowed. “I wonder how the doctors managed to remove it. I am very grateful,” she said.

Her husband Pechimuthu, a daily wage earner, has returned home after the surgery but will come to Chennai when his son is discharged.

Source : Yahoo

GREEN BAY, Wis. – A 33-year-old woman is accused of stealing her daughter’s identity to attend high school and join the cheerleading squad

Wendy Brown is charged with felony identity theft after enrolling in a Wisconsin high school as her daughter.

The criminal complaint says Brown admitted to telling school officials she was 15 because she wanted to get her high school diploma and join the cheerleading squad.

She allegedly attended practices, received a cheerleader’s locker and went to a pool party at the coach’s house.

The complaint says Brown has a history of identity theft. Her daughter lives in Nevada with Brown’s mother.

There was no attorney listed in Brown’s online court records. Her home number could not be found.

Source NYT

An unusually detailed study of people newly infected with H.I.V. in the United States has confirmed that the majority of new cases occur among gay and bisexual men and that blacks are most at risk. But the data show that whites and blacks tend to be infected at different times in their lives with the virus that causes AIDS.

Most new infections of white gay and bisexual men occur when the men are in their 30s and 40s, the study found, while black gay and bisexual men are more likely to be infected in their teens and 20s. The results were reported on Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The C.D.C. reported last month that the study found that the virus was spreading faster in the United States than had been thought. In 2006, the study found, 56,300 people were newly infected with H.I.V. — 40 percent more than the agency’s previous estimate of roughly 40,000 new cases a year. The study was performed using new technology that allowed researchers to distinguish between new and older infections.

Dr. Kevin Fenton of the C.D.C. said the study’s findings served “as a powerful reminder that the U.S. epidemic of H.I.V. disease is far from over.”

The details of the agency’s demographic analysis were released on Thursday in the hope that knowledge of the age, race and other characteristics of the newly infected would better direct prevention efforts.

“The data really confirm what we had suspected and known before,” said Dr. Fenton, who emphasized the disease’s “disproportionate impact on gay and bisexual men and on blacks and Latinos.”

Black people, who make up about 12 percent of the population, accounted for more than 45 percent of the new infections, the study found, and the disparity was particularly acute among women.

Black women are nearly 15 times as likely to be infected with H.I.V. as white women. Hispanic women are four times as likely to be infected as white women. Black men have six times the H.I.V. incidence rate of white men and nearly three times that of Hispanic men.

Among those newly infected with the virus, black men were no more likely to be drug users or to engage in risky sex than were white men, according to the study. More research is needed to explain why young black men are at such greater risk for contracting the disease, but there are several hints from other studies, researchers said.

The fact that proportionally more blacks than whites are already infected would tend to produce higher transmission rates among blacks, said Dr. Richard Wolitski, acting director of the center’s division for H.I.V. and AIDS prevention. Young black men are much more likely to have been incarcerated. Infection rates among former convicts are high, largely because of behaviors outside of prison, studies show.

Dr. Wolitski said young black gay and bisexual men also tended to have partners who were older than their white counterparts and thus were more likely to have already been infected.

Girls and women make up 27 percent of those newly infected with the virus, and 80 percent of them contracted H.I.V. because of high-risk heterosexual contact. Among newly infected males, 81 percent of white men and 63 percent of black men were gay or bisexual.

In one of the most dismal statistics provided by the centers, researchers said that 80 percent of gay and bisexual men in 15 cities had not been reached by intensive H.I.V. prevention efforts that have proven effective. Agency officials said that more must be done, including expanded H.I.V. screening programs and better directing of prevention efforts at those most at risk.