Latest news with #MassGeneral
CBS News
10 hours ago
- Health
- CBS News
19-year-old suffers broken neck after diving into wave at Hampton Beach
A young man was seriously injured after an accident while swimming at Hampton Beach in New Hampshire. Aiden Sloan, 19, is hospitalized in Boston after breaking his neck on a sand bar. The recovery has been devastating for Aiden and his mother, who says this could have happened to anyone. "This morning, I came in and I woke him up with a forehead rub like I usually do. He said 'good morning, Mom. What do you got in that bag?' I said, 'it's a chocolate chip muffin.' He said, 'I'd like a bite of that,'" said Melina Burton smiling, of her son in his hospital bed at Mass General. That simple request meant the world to Burton, who for days, has been desperate to do anything for her son Aiden: feed him, help him, make him smile. Aiden Sloan suffered a broken neck after diving into a wave at Hampton Beach. CBS Boston "He has fractures in his neck, his spine is bruised. He had a concussion. They've got his neck stabilized. Not being able to move his legs and his hands. It's getting to him," the mother explained. Everything changed on Monday, when the 19-year-old jumped in to cool off at Hampton Beach. "He went to the beach with his cousins. They were up to their mid-thigh. He went to dive through a wave and there was a sandbar on the other side of it. He hit it head on," she said. Overwhelmed by generosity After being flown to surgery at MGH in Boston, this mother and son family is bracing for the journey ahead at Spaulding Rehab. Burton said her passionate cook is overwhelmed by generosity from his restaurant friends and New Hampshire neighbors. "We set the goal for $8,000. Never in a million years did I think we'd be at $30,000 which is absolutely amazing and so overwhelming. I tell Aiden and he's like 'shoot I didn't know that many people liked me!'" That part, she understands. Nobody likes Aiden - loves Aiden - more than her. "Being his mom has been my greatest accomplishment," she said. "He is my everything. And I just need him to be OK."
Time of India
7 days ago
- Health
- Time of India
Kidney transplant turns dangerous after parasite found in donor organ
A routine kidney transplant meant to save a man's life nearly cost him everything—because of a parasite no one saw coming. Two months after undergoing what should have been a life-improving surgery, a 61-year-old man was rushed back to the hospital in distress. He wasn't just feeling unwell—he was vomiting, severely fatigued, constantly thirsty, and urinating excessively. As his symptoms escalated, his oxygen levels dropped and fluid began to accumulate in his lungs. Despite being placed on a feeding tube, his condition worsened. Doctors transferred him to intensive care and began a frantic search for answers. According to a detailed case report in the New England Journal of Medicine, physicians at Massachusetts General Hospital suspected an infection but were faced with a daunting challenge: the man was on powerful immunosuppressive drugs following his transplant, which meant nearly any infectious agent could be the cause. What did they find? Dr. Camille Kotton, Clinical Director of the Transplant and Immunocompromised Host Infectious Diseases division at Mass General, was part of the team trying to find the cause. As reported by Ars Technica, she began by ruling out likely viral infections, since the patient was already on preventative medications. But when she noticed two unusual signs—a significant rise in eosinophils (a type of white blood cell linked to parasitic infections) and a reddish-purple rash on the patient's abdomen—her attention turned toward a lesser-considered threat: a parasitic roundworm called Strongyloides. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Giao dịch CFD với công nghệ và tốc độ tốt hơn IC Markets Tìm hiểu thêm Undo This worm typically infects the gastrointestinal tract and can become deadly when undiagnosed in immunocompromised individuals. To follow her hunch, Dr. Kotton contacted the organ-procurement organization and learned that the donor had lived in the Caribbean, a region where Strongyloides is endemic. The donor's blood hadn't been tested for the parasite prior to organ recovery, but stored samples later revealed antibodies against it. Meanwhile, the transplant recipient's pre-transplant blood was negative—confirming that the infection had come from the donor. What was the path to recovery? T ests soon uncovered worm larvae in the patient's lungs and stool. The treatment required ivermectin, a deworming medication approved by the FDA only for oral use in humans. With special approval, doctors administered the drug subcutaneously. Slowly, the patient began to recover. Then came another shock: the recipient of the donor's other kidney had also fallen critically ill. When doctors exchanged notes, they found the same parasite at work. Fortunately, both patients survived. In response to the case, the United Network for Organ Sharing has since revised its transplant screening guidelines, now recommending universal Strongyloides testing for donors from high-risk regions. The case serves as a stark reminder that even life-saving procedures can carry hidden dangers—and that vigilance doesn't end with the operating room. One step to a healthier you—join Times Health+ Yoga and feel the change
Daily Mail
17-06-2025
- Health
- Daily Mail
Eric Dane issues major ALS battle update as he promises fans 'I'm fighting as much as I can'
Eric Dane has given a huge update on his battle with incurable degenerative neurological disorder, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). 'I'm fighting as much as I can,' the 52-year-old Grey's Anatomy alum told Good Morning America 's Diane Sawyer on Tuesday. 'There's so much about it that's out of my control.' Eric is currently taking medication to slow the symptoms and he's also participating in a research study. 'I will fly to Germany and eat the head off a rattlesnake if [doctors] told me that that would help,' Dane stressed. 'I'll assume the risk.' The SAG Award winner was joined by his neurologist Dr. Merit Cudkowicz, who admitted: 'It's a hard diagnosis to hear, but I want [patients] to hear that there's hope. I never want anyone to hear that there's nothing to do because there's a lot to do.' 'That's what I got from Merit when I met her. There was a sense of hope I didn't get from other doctors that I met with,' Eric noted, adding prior doctors were just 'there to monitor my decline and that's not very helpful.' There are currently 5K people diagnosed with ALS annually, according to the CDC. 'But those numbers are going up moderately fast,' the Chief of Neurology at Mass General warned. 'It's really predicted by, like, 2040 [that] the numbers of people with ALS in the world will be increased by about 40%.' Dr. Cudkowicz listed off some of the ALS risk factors including plastics, bacteria in lakes, head trauma in sports, pesticides, military service, and 'there's many more we don't know about.' 'There's people all over the world working on this,' the Harvard Medical School professor encouraged. 'Between artificial intelligence and other imaging technology - to really be able to to subtype people - that's what gets me excited. That's all coming in the next, I think, one to two years, if not faster.' Back in 2014, the viral ice-bucket challenge raised $200M for ALS research 'in the US alone and it was spent quickly.' 'I'm very hopeful, yeah, I don't think this is the end of my story. I'm pretty resilient,' Eric beamed. 'I just don't feel, like in my heart, [that] this is the end of me.' Dane first experienced weakness in his right hand one year ago, but he 'thought maybe I'd been texting too much or my hand was fatigued' until a hand specialist eventually referred him to a neurologist. 'I will fly to Germany and eat the head off a rattlesnake if [doctors] told me that that would help,' Dane stressed. 'I'll assume the risk' 'That's what I got from Merit when I met her. There was a sense of hope I didn't get from other doctors that I met with,' Eric noted, adding prior doctors were just 'there to monitor my decline and that's not very helpful' There are currently 5K people diagnosed with ALS annually, 'but those numbers are going up moderately fast,' the Chief of Neurology at Mass General warned 'I have one functioning arm. My left side is functioning. My right side, [which is my dominant side], has completely stopped working,' the San Francisco-born silver fox revealed Monday. '[My left arm] is going. I feel like maybe a couple, a few more months and I won't have my left hand either. Sobering. I'm worried about my legs.' Luckily, Eric has the love and support of his wife Rebecca Gayheart, who dismissed her divorce petition in March following seven years of estrangement, as well as their 15-year-old daughter Billie and 13-year-old daughter Georgia. 'I talk to her every day,' Dane emotionally said of the 53-year-old Jawbreaker alum. 'We have managed to become better friends and better parents. And she is probably my biggest champion and my most stalwart supporter. And I lean on her.' On average, ALS patients live two to five years following their first symptoms, but FDA-approved medications and physical/speech therapies might slow down the progression of the disorder. Audiences can next catch the Bad Boys: Ride or Die action star as Special Agent Nathan Blythe in Derek Haas' new 13-episode crime drama Countdown, which premieres June 25 on Amazon Prime Video. On April 14, Eric began reprising his role as the closeted real estate agent Cal Jacobs in the third season of HBO hit show Euphoria produced by and starring Zendaya as Ruby 'Rue' Bennett. Sam Levinson's drug-fueled drama will welcome newcomers Sharon Stone, Rosalía, Marshawn Lynch, and Kadeem Hardison in season three. But Dane got his big break portraying plastic surgeon Mark 'McSteamy' Sloan from 2006–2012 on the ABC medical drama Grey's Anatomy.
CBS News
31-05-2025
- Health
- CBS News
Massachusetts high school baseball player celebrates end of radiation treatment with teammates
The baseball field at North Reading High School has been getting a lot of use this season. They've made it to the playoffs after all. But their inspiration to play better and practice harder has come from a teammate who was not on the field this year. Brady Cullen is a 16-year-old sophomore at NRHS who would normally be finishing a spring season in his position on third base. Last August, he and his family got a devastating diagnosis of a brain tumor (pilocytic astrocytoma.) The non-cancerous tumor was too close to his brain stem to be operated on. After months of appointments, his medical team at Mass General Hospital recommended radiation to stop it from growing. Brady rings bell after six weeks of radiation This week, Brady finished his 30th session. Six weeks of radiation, five days a week. When Brady rang the bell in the halls of MGH he wasn't alone. "It was unbelievable. It was hard not to just break down right there in the hospital," Brady recalled. When he turned around, he found his entire baseball team lining up in the halls. Cheering him on as he left his last appointment in his months-long battle. North Reading sophomore Brady Cullen is greeted by his baseball teammates after completing treatment at Mass General Brigham. Mass General Brigham "They are my brothers and to see that combined with my family, it was so special," he said. "It just made me realize I am at peace with myself. I am at peace with my journey. I am where I want to be I am where I need to be and that will never change." Team makes trip to Boston Eric Archambault is the head coach of the North Reading High School baseball team. Coach Arch, as he's called, said it wasn't a question of whether the team would make the trip to Boston on Thursday. He said Brady never missed school and rarely missed practice or games as a team manager during his treatments. "We are seeing a kid with our very eyes attack a situation that nobody wishes for, and he takes it head on every single day," said Archambault. "Everyone wasn't supporting Brady just because of the diagnosis. We are supporting Brady because of who he is. He has touched everyone on the team throughout the years, and we look up to him." Brady said he plans to work with a physical therapist and get back out on the field. Overwhelmed and thankful for the army of support he had from his team and community. "Life is the most precious and beautiful thing, and it can be taken away so fast and I want them to realize that, embrace hardships because hardships build your character and they build who you are, and they make you stronger than ever," Brady said. "I know for damn sure I am stronger than ever from this. I am proud to say I came out on top with a whole new perspective on live and a new appreciation for it."
Medscape
13-05-2025
- Health
- Medscape
Good News and Sobering News on Cardiac Risks in Marathoners
This transcript has been edited for clarity. Michelle L. O'Donoghue, MD, MPH: Hi. I am Dr Michelle O'Donoghue, reporting for Medscape. Joining me today is Dr Aaron Baggish. He's a professor of medicine at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland and is the former director of the Massachusetts General Hospital's Cardiovascular Performance Program. Thanks for joining me, Dr Baggish. Aaron L. Baggish, MD: Michelle, it's a real pleasure. Thank you for having me. SCD in Endurance Events O'Donoghue: You've been at the forefront of focusing on athletes and both their ability to participate in competitive sports as well as better understanding outcomes for athletes who may have underlying cardiac conditions that could put them at increased risk for sudden cardiac death during participation sports. Baggish: This has been a 20-year journey for me, but it's really only been in the past 10 years that the field of sports cardiology has firmly gelled. We're now seeing this as an accepted part of the entire cardiovascular offering, if you will, from a high-level service provider, like where you work at Brigham and Women's Hospital or Mass General. It's been really fun to be a part of that. O'Donoghue: I'd like to talk a little bit more about that journey over time, but most recently, focusing in on some of the data that you presented at the American College of Cardiology and focusing on the incidence of sudden cardiac arrest in people participating in long-distance running — mostly, of course, marathons, but also half-marathons, so those types of endurance events. Would you tell us a little bit more about that? Baggish: I'd be pleased to. At this year's American College of Cardiology (ACC) meeting, we had the opportunity to present the RACER 2 data, which are a look at cardiac arrest incidence and survival rates over the past 13 years in the United States. Before delving into those data, it's worth sharing the background for this. In 2012, we published the first RACER study, which very much set the benchmark for what was happening for the first decade of the century in the United States. That provided some baseline incidence statistics. We were at that point able to establish that the survival rate for runners that had cardiac arrest on the course was roughly 30%.Importantly, we learned about why people lived and why they died. One of the most important things being that most of these events occur very late in the race, within sight of the finish line. After RACER was published, as I think you know, I was fortunate enough to be working in the capacity as medical director for the Boston Marathon and tried hard with colleagues all over the country to take some of what we learned in RACER and translate it into better rationale for doing the RACER 2 study was to see if that work had made a difference. O'Donoghue: What were the topline findings that you presented? Baggish: There was both a sobering story and a good news story. The sobering story was that the actual incidence of cardiac arrest over the past 20 years really hasn't changed much. Most specifically, for the highest-risk group who are men who run the marathon distance, which is 26.2 miles or 42 kilometers, depending on which system you use, roughly 1 in 100 runners will succumb to cardiac arrest. This, as maybe we'll talk about later, is a wake-up call for us to think about more in the primary prevention space. The really exciting finding in RACER 2 is that we had essentially seen a 50% improvement in survival. Back with the first study, that was a 30% survival rate. Now, we see a 70% survival rate. This can really be attributed to a small list of important interventions. O'Donoghue: What kind of interventions are we talking about?Is it about availability of defibrillators or other? Baggish: It's two things. What we learned from RACER is that immediate bystander cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and timely access to external defibrillation were perfect predictors of survival. What we did after RACER is make a concerted effort to make certain that those two things were available in as many race circumstances as possible. When we looked at our predictors of survival in RACER 2, there was now almost uniform application of defibrillators and CPR. This translated into much better outcomes. From HCM to CAD and a Paradigm Shift in Guidelines O'Donoghue: Many people think to themselves that it's people who perhaps have underlying conditions such as hypertrophic cardiomyopathy who succumb to these types of events during a long-distance race. What did you actually observe? Baggish: In RACER 2, it was very interesting, and this represented a shift from RACER in which hypertrophic cardiomyopathy was indeed the most common finding either at autopsy after death or on clinical evaluation after survival. We saw a shift in RACER 2, and some of this shift may be due to the way evaluations are done now or the way autopsies are clearly, the dominant cause of cardiac arrest is simple atherosclerotic coronary disease among typically older athletes. O'Donoghue: That is perhaps just a nice segue as we think about the participation of people who might have underlying cardiac conditions such as hypertrophic so long, there used to be somewhat of a blanket recommendation for many people to not participate in competitive sports. How has that changed over the past several years? How are we thinking about that now? Baggish: This is a really exciting paradigm shift in the way we care for active many decades, based largely on appropriate concern about pushing the body hard with an underlying heart problem, the approach has been to limit and take away competitive sport participation from all people that have that condition. Quite frankly, this was an understandable but old-school approach, which was really based in paternalisticmedicine. What's happened over the past decade is there have been data series showing that exercise is actually much safer than we expected among people that have this condition, including relatively high levels of competitive exercise. While the risk is not zero, and certainly there is still a risk assessment situation that needs to occur every time the diagnosis is made, we've moved away fromlimiting people universally and have entered into an era where shared decision-making between the doctor and the patient has become the recommended practice. O'Donoghue: That is actually an important shift, as you phrase it, from that former paternalistic approach, but for many people it was really devastating to be told that in fact they could never participate in any type of competitive sport in their done a nice job of also highlighting how that could lead to depression and have many consequences that perhaps the physician at the time was not always keeping in mind. Baggish: As you highlight, Michelle, shared decision-making is not about unchecked autonomy. It's not telling every person to go forth and do whatever they want without thought and consideration. I think the part of the equation that's been missing for so many years is the downside of taking physical activity away from people after a cardiac diagnosis. This can have not only health implications but also have social, academic, and occupational implications. We now see both sides of the equation. What we do with the patient athlete when a new diagnosis is established is work with them and often times other people that are important to them — whether it's family members, teammates, coaches, administrators — whoever it is to come up with the right decision that balances both their medical risk and their personal preferences and values. O'Donoghue: As we think about shared decision-making, I know that one area of your research has been looking at survival rates, not only for long-distance runners but also, for instance, for youth participating in competitive sports who may unfortunately have a sudden cardiac death, albeit very rare. If a defibrillator, for instance, is available, where somebody is participating in a sport and somebody does receive an appropriate shock, do we know the survival rates for those individuals and perhaps this puts more of a focus even on the pediatric population? Higher Risks in Underserved Populations Baggish: Also presented at the recent ACC meeting was a look at what happens in the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). The focus of that paper, which I also had the privilege of being involved in, was a clear documentation of the fact that survival rates have improved in that population as well.I personally don't think that has anything to do with more effectively screening people out of sport who have heart conditions. What it has to do with is having robust emergency action plans. In colleges and universities — and this is trickling down into high school and youth sports, as it should— it's now become clear that if you are going to oversee young people participating in sport, or even older people for that matter, that the most important thing you can do is have a well-developed and rehearsed emergency action plan, which again, is about two simple things. It's immediate CPR and access to a defibrillator, ideally within 3 minutes of collapse. O'Donoghue: If I'm correct, one of the observations in that particular analysis that was done was that race appeared to be a predictor of worse survival. Is part of that related to perhaps lack of either defibrillator access or education on the front of that type of emergency action plan you're talking about, including CPR? Baggish: I think so. I want to be clear that we have many unanswered questions about the impact of social determinants of health, structural racism, all of the terms that we're now more familiar with as they translate into outcomes and athletes. What I see is the next 5-10 years of very important work is to better understand why this is what we're seeing and also figure out ways to reduce those care gaps. I don't think it has anything to do with the intrinsic biology of how people self-report their race. I think it has to do with the environments in which they live and practice sport, and some insufficiencies in some places where people from typically underserved populations tend to be. O'Donoghue: Thanks for highlighting these important points. As you say, there's the good news aspect of this that, for people who have this type of complication, either during youth competitive sports or endurance athletes, fortunately, it does appear that overall survival is improving. Hopefully, as we continue to have cost reduced for things like defibrillator access and continuing to work on education, that we can continue to improve those rates even further. Baggish: I'm hopeful that will represent the future. I think there's still a large amount of science to be done to help us understand this issue of racial disparities and how they translate it to differential is not unique to sports cardiology. This is across all aspects of cardiovascular medicine. I'm excited to see where that goes in the next 5-10 years. O'Donoghue: Thanks again for joining me today. Signing off for Medscape, this is Dr Michelle O'Donoghue.
