Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, October 19, 1993 TAG: 9310190175
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The most common cause of cardiac arrest is a wildly rapid heart rhythm called fibrillation. Since 1980, more than 25,000 patients known to be at high risk of fibrillation have had devices called automatic implantable cardioverter defibrillators (AICDs) implanted under the skin on the left side of the abdomen.
The cigarette-pack-size devices have electrodes leading to the heart. AICDs detect abnormal heart rhythms and deliver an electrical shock to restore the heartbeat to normal.
Researchers interviewed 40 patients, 33 men and seven women, who had AICDs implanted at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston. All were advised before and after surgery never to drive again because abnormal heart rhythms often cause dizziness or fainting.
Of the 40, 28 (70 percent) resumed driving, some as early as two weeks after leaving the hospital. Only four refrained from driving specifically because of fear or a doctor's warning. Fourteen said they drove daily. One patient even drove himself home from the hospital.
Two of the patients reported having their AICD discharge while they were driving. They said they continued to drive after the discharge and denied feeling dizzy, fainting or losing consciousness.
The study was conducted by a cardiology team at the Medical University of South Carolina. Results were published last week in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Many states do not monitor driving practices of patients with arrhythmias, researchers reported, but they do ask applicants for driver's licenses about physical problems that might impair driving. In such cases a doctor must fill out a report to the motor-vehicle department, which makes the final decision.
In England, the researchers noted, patients undergoing AICD implantation must give up their driver's licenses. In Canada, doctors are required to report patients with AICDs to the motor-vehicle department. Such patients are allowed to resume driving after one year if they have had no AICD discharge to defibrillate an out-of-control heartbeat.
"We believe that physicians' groups in concert with motor-vehicle departments in the United States should make a similar attempt" to outline uniform guidelines for drivers with arrhythmias, the study concluded.
Day care and leukemia
Close contact with other young children can reduce your child's risk of contracting serious diseases such as childhood leukemia. The British Medical Journal says studies in Greece found that children suffering leukemia were less likely than healthy children to have attended a day care program, especially in their first two years. Researchers say this could be because childhood leukemia is a rare result of an infection but is less likely to develop when the infection occurs at an early age. They theorize that crowding of children at day care centers means that infection can be rapidly transmitted between babies and toddlers, ensuring that they catch and get over bugs when young.
School of hard knocks\ From the spare-the-rod-and-spoil-the-child department: Reversing a 15-year trend, corporal punishment is on the rise in classrooms nationwide, mostly in the South, Family Circle magazine says. As many as 600,000 students were paddled by teachers or administrators in public schools in 1990, according to a government survey quoted by the magazine.
Running with the wolves:
How to respond to the obnoxious person at a party who goes on and on about his or her children's accomplishments. "You just say, `Oh, mine are being raised by wolves, they'll be founding Rome any day now,"' writer Mark Jacobson advises in Esquire magazine.
by CNB