Healthy Memphis

Family Cancer Center has launched a hotline for Mid-South physicians with questions about cancer or blood disorders. The toll-free number is designed to provide doctors with access to expert advice day or night. To request the number, physicians should call Rola Obaji, marketing director for the eight-member Memphis medical group. Call Obaji at 850-0272.

Memphis ranks as the nation’s fifth toughest place for asthmatics to live in the latest survey from the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America. Knoxville again made the top spot.

The 2008 rankings are based on 12 factors, ranging from air quality and pollen counts to self-reports of asthma and prescriptions for asthma-related medications. Survey sponsors hope the ratings will spur community action to improve air quality, access to medications, asthma education and health care.

The group rated Memphis as “worse than average” in seven categories, including the crude rate of asthma-related deaths, air quality and annual pollen score. It ranked average in six others, including estimated asthma prevalence, number of asthma specialists and use of asthma medications.

Chattanooga, Johnson City, Little Rock and Nashville also made the list of top 50 worst cities. Respectively they are ranked 16th, 17th, 22th and 29th.

The survey is underwritten by the pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca. cq no space

For more information, visit asthmacapitals.com.

Do you have asthma? Write in and share your tips for surviving in the Bluff City.

Saint Francis - Memphis Center for Surgical Weight Loss made regional news Friday when a medical team used a recently-approved adjustable band to treat three patients by dramatically reducing the size of their stomachs.

All were at least 100 pounds heavier than their recommended weight. All underwent the procedure hoping that the band, sold as the Realize Adjustable Gastric Band, will help them lose weight. The band, which won federal approval in September, joins similar devices already on the market.

“Gastric bypass is still the gold-standard. But a lot of people are still scared of gastric bypass because they are scared of changing their anatomy and rerouting their intestines,” said Dr. Virginia Weaver, the center’s medical director. Surgeons commonly use staples to create a dramatically smaller stomach pouch and then link it to a surgically shortened section of the digestive system.

For those willing to accept more gradual weight loss, Weaver said research suggests adjustable bands are as effective for weight loss and in curing type-two diabetes. The bands go around the stomach. The resulting stomach can hold just a half-cup of food or liquid.

Patients who opt for bypass surgery typically lose 60 to 80 percent of excess body weight within 18 months, Weaver said. In comparison, patients who choose the band take two to three years to lose 55 to 60 percent of excess weight. After five years, the weight loss is comparable, Weaver said.

Complication rates for both procedures are low and death rates even lower.

Weaver predicted interest in the adjustable band will grow following a recent study that showed it helped people lose enough weight to send their type-two diabetes into remission.

Have you had surgery to help you lose weight?

One of my sisters-in-law took the plunge and late last year underwent gastric bypass surgery. She's already dropped nearly 40 pounds, but it hasn't been easy. The surgery itself wasn't difficult. But she said it's been unexpectedly tough to join everyone at the dinner table and be able to eat just a bite or two.

If you took the plunge, let us know about your experience with the surgery. If you are considering it, how will you decide?

Medicare officials are considering making it easier to be checked for sleep apnea by paying for home diagnostic testing.

Currently Medicare only pays for a sleep apnea treatment dubbed C-PAP if the problem was diagnosed in a sleep laboratory. But in December officials proposed expanding coverage to include those identified through home testing. Medicare is the government health program for older and disabled Americans.

You have through Sunday to visit Medicare's Web site and comment on the proposal. A decision is expected in March.

Associated Press reporter Lauran Neergaard noted in her recent story that the Medicare debate is significant because private insurers are expected to follow the government program's lead.

Sleep apnea, which sometimes includes snoring loud enough to wake up the entire house, affects an estimated 18 million Americans. It is linked to sleep deprivation and an increased risk of high blood pressure, heart attack, stroke and diabetes. It occurs when throat muscles momentarily collapse, cutting off the oxygen flow and eventually causing sufferers to jerk awake. C-PAP treats the condition by increasing a patient's air supply during slumber.

Tennessee ranks 34th in state spending for tobacco prevention targeting children and teenagers, but Gov. Phil Bredesen and state legislators still got an pat on the back recently from an anti-smoking group. That's because the state went from allocating nothing for tobacco prevention to earmarking $10 million for such efforts.

The same elected officials also got a scolding from the national Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. Nationally Tennessee ranks 34th among states in spending on programs to convince children to remain tobacco free. That's better than last year when Tennessee landed in last place and earmarked nothing for tobacco prevention. The advocacy group publishes annual rankings.

But state spending in Tennessee remains well below the $32 million federal health officials have recommended the state devote to tobacco prevention.

The funds come from the 1998 settlement officials from Tennessee and other states reached with major tobacco companies.

After falling for several years, the percentage of American adults and high school students has stalled. Federal officials estimate about 23 percent of high school students and nearly 21 percent of adults smoke.

Smoking increases a person's risk of developing a range of health problems, including cancer and heart disease.

More information about the report is available at the group's Web site.

Lifeblood, Mid-South Regional Blood Center, just made platelet donation a bit easier. On Thursday it started including platelet collection at mobile blood drives held inside churches, schools, business or other locations.

Previously the blood components was only collected at five of Lifeblood's nine collection centers.

Jennifer Balink, a Lifeblood spokeswoman, said the agency decided to invest in additional equipment to make platelet collection more widely available. Lifeblood hopes to increase platelet collections 10 percent in the coming year. That would be good news to a long list of patients, including those battling cancer or facing open-heart surgery. Platelets are essential for blood clotting.

It takes about two hours to donate platelets, which has been a stumbling block for me. I have convinced myself I don't have the time. Ridiculous, I know, but despite being a regular blood donor and understanding the need for platelets, the time commitment has me stumped.

I would love to hear from regular platelet donors about how wrong I am.

If you are considering bariatric weight-loss surgery, the October issue of the Archives of Surgery includes some practical advice and a sobering finding.

Here's the advice. Don't wait until you have the surgery to start losing weight.

A study of 884 high-risk, morbidly obese patients found those who lost 5 to 10 percent of their excess weight before surgery had a better result than similar patients who did not. The report is from investigators at Geisinger Health System, in Danville, Pa.

They found patients who lost 5 to 10 percent of their weight before surgery left the hospital faster and were twice as likely as other patients to lose 70 percent of their extra weight within the year.

The study focused on older patients with medical problems, like diabetes, liver inflammation and circulatory problems, that push them into the high-risk category.

Earlier studies have suggested that even limited weight loss helps ease chronic health problems. But the study's authors said additional research is needed to understand how losing weight before surgery could help individuals shed pounds later.

Here is something else to think about. Weight-loss surgery patients had higher death rates, including rates of suicide, than the general population. That's the conclusion of a University of Pittsburgh analysis of 16,683 bariatric surgeries performed in Pennsylvania between 1994 and 2005.

The surgery patients were "substantially" more likely to die within five years of surgery than were other Pennsylvania residents who were the same age and sex. About 1 percent of surgery patients died within a year of the procedure. More than 6 percent were dead within five years, the authors noted.

The findings prompted researchers to recommend surgery patient receive better follow-up and support.

There is new evidence surgery helps some children sleep and thus behave better.

That's the conclusion of a study published in the new October issue of the Archives of Otolaryngology - Head & Neck Surgery. The research involved 117 children, whose average age was 6.5 years. They were treated at the University of Kansas School of Medicine. All had been diagnosed with sleep-related breathing problems, including snoring and other factors affecting their air supply.

All underwent surgery to remove their tonsils and adenoids.

Six months later parents reported their child slept significantly better and had significantly fewer behavior problems, including memory and thinking difficulties or hyperactivity.

The results aren't surprising. Such sleep problems are associated with a variety of behavior and learning problems. The sleep woes affect as many as 11 percent of children.

A new guide to ADHD treatment options is now available free online.

Titled "The ADHD Parents Medication Guide," it was developed by medical specialists without funding or input from pharmaceutical companies. It includes information about different drugs used to treat attention deficit, hyperactivity disorder as well as counseling and other strategies to to better manage hyperactivity, short attention span and other ADHD symptoms.

It was developed by the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and the American Psychiatric Association with input from six other medical and mental health groups.

Go to ParentsMedGuide.org to read or download a copy.

The October medical specialty journals are just out and they include plenty of practical advice.

Here are several items that caught my eye.

Playing with toy building blocks seems to promote language development in toddlers. That is the conclusion of research published in the Archives of Pediatric & Adolescent Medicine. The study involved 175 youngsters between ages 18 and 32 months who lived in middle- or low-income households.

About half the families received two sets of building blocks along with suggested activities for using them. Parents completed diaries about how they used the blocks. The others received the blocks when the study ended.

Six months later toddlers in families who received blocks scored an average 15 percent higher on language assessment than youngsters who did not, wrote the researchers, who are based at the University of Washington, Seattle, and Seattle Children's Hospital Research Institute. The investigators described the difference as significant.

They speculated that block play might have replaced other activities, like TV viewing, which don't encourage language development. The study was funded by a children's toy company.

The next two items are from the Archives of General Psychiatry.

Folks who are self-disciplined, goal-directed and purposeful appear less likely to develop Alzheimer disease. Those are the findings from a study of about 1,000 aging Catholic nuns, priests and brothers whose memory and brain health were measured for an average of nearly eight years.

Those whose self-assessment indicated higher than average conscientiousness were less likely to develop Alzheimer's than colleagues with lower rating. Alzheimer robs individuals of their memory as well as problem-solving and other intellectual skills. The work was done by researchers at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago.

The final item comes from a national study examining how best to treat depressed adolescents.

Turns out young people who received both medication and talk therapy were most likely to improve. The treatment included the antidepressant medication known as fluoxetine and a type of talk therapy known as cognitive behavior therapy. Nine months into treatment, 86 percent reported feeling better. That compares with 81 percent for patients who received either medicine or talk therapy alone.

The study involved more then 400 depressed adolescents.