Cedars-Sinai Medical Tip Sheet for Feb. 5

CEDARS-SINAI MEDICAL TIP SHEET: Feb. 5, 1999

PRIMARY SCLEROSING CHOLANGITIS SURVIVOR (FORMER USC FOOTBALL PLAYER) AND MEDICAL EXPERT AVAILABLE FOR INTERVIEWS

In the aftermath of this week's announcement that NFL hero Walter Payton is in need of a liver transplant due to Primary Sclerosing Cholangitis (PSC), much attention has been focused on this disease. Wendell Sawyer, age 43, knows about PSC first-hand. Sunday, Feb. 7, 1999, marked the 3rd anniversary of his liver transplant. Sawyer, a former USC football player, is available to discuss liver transplants and the disorder from the perspective of a PSC survivor. His physician, John Vierling, M.D., is also available. Dr. Vierling is Medical Director of Liver Transplantation at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and National Chair, Board of Directors, American Liver Foundation. Interviews: John Vierling, M.D., Medical Director of Liver Transplantation at Cedars-Sinai; Wendell Sawyer, PSC Survivor

RELATIVELY RARE SURGICAL APPROACH OFFERS HOPE FOR EPILEPSY PATIENTS

In December 1998, Mary Kate Welsh, a 33-year-old who had suffered with epilepsy since she was eight months old, became the first patient at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center to undergo surgery while she was awake to disconnect the language cortex without affecting speech. This relatively rare surgical approach (multiple subpial transections of the language cortex and a selective hippocampectomy) was undertaken after extensive studies determined that Mary Kate's increasingly frequent and disruptive seizures were arising from the language cortex and spreading to the hippocampus. Since the operation, she has been seizure-free and her prognosis, says neurosurgen Michel Levesque, M.D., is excellent. Interviews: Michel Levesque, M.D., Director Neurofunctional Surgery Center,Cedars-Sinai, Mary Kate Welsh, Patient

UNCOMMON PROCEDURE ENABLES PATIENTS WITH DWARFISM TO DO THINGS MOST PEOPLE TAKE FOR GRANTED

For the past seven years, medical geneticists at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, and Joseph Isaacson, M.D., orthopedic surgeon, have specialized in a limb-lengthening procedure known as the Vilarrubias technique. Although limb lengthening is performed at other institutions throughout the country, this technique is particularly appropriate in treating patients with dwarfism because it lengthens both thighs at the same time and both lower legs at the same time -- unlike the older procedure, the Ilizarov technique. Interviews: David L. Rimoin, M.D., Ph.D., holder of the Steven Spielberg Family Chair in Pediatrics and director of the Medical Genetics-Birth Defects Center at Cedars-Sinai; Joanna Vaughn, 22, patient

CEDARS-SINAI MAXINE DUNITZ NEUROSURGICAL INSTITUTE NEWS -- GENE ARRAY/DNA EXTRACTION

This is "EMBARGOED" info. The full release will be available when the findings are published in March, but here's a preview: Using new technology that can analyze 18,000 to 20,000 genes at a time, researchers at the Cedars-Sinai Maxine Dunitz Neurosurgical Institute have found specific genes that are differentially expressed in brain tumors compared to normal tissue. Neurosurgeon and neuroscientist, Keith Black, M.D., director of the Cedars-Sinai Maxine Dunitz Neurosurgical Institute is garnering a significant amount of attention for his ground-breaking work on a new cancer vaccine -- Dendritic Cell Immunotherapy. On Thursday, Feb. 4, he was honored by the Magic Johnson Foundation and National Trust Bank. The Jan. 13 issue of Newsweek-Japan (in a cover story) named him one of the world's 100 leaders going into the next century. Interviews: Keith Black, M.D., Director, Cedars-Sinai Maxine Dunitz Neurosurgical Institute

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