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Health Sciences: UCLA Newsroom
- UCLA medical team returns to Peru to help kids with heart conditionsHundreds of Peruvian children suffering from congenital heart conditions will be resting a little easier, thanks to a visit by a team of volunteer pediatric heart experts from UCLA.The group, led by Dr. Juan Alejos, associate professor of pediatric cardiology at Mattel Children's Hospital UCLA, wraps up its third annual trip to Arequipa, in southern Peru, on Oct. 4, following more than three weeks of free surgeries, clinical evaluations and other medical procedures for needy children at local hospitals, orphanages and clinics."We do cardiac catheterization procedures, interventional and diagnostic procedures, echocardiograms, surgical interventions and dental evaluations," said Alejos, who founded the nonprofit Corazones con Esperanza (Hearts with Hope) Foundation five years ago to help provide medical and humanitarian assistance to children suffering from congenital heart disease throughout Latin America.This trip is part of the group's five-year commitment to Arequipa and the city's Carlos Aberto Seguin Escobedo National Hospital to help them build a pediatric cardiology program.The 55-member team — which includes surgeons, cardiologists, family practitioners, nurses, dentists and other volunteers from UCLA, as well as from Delaware's Nemours Cardiac Center, the University of Kentucky, Wisconsin Children's Hospital and Denver Children's Hospital — has certainly provided an excellent example.Since Sept. 13, they have performed approximately 25 open-heart surgeries, 30 cardiac catheterizations, half a dozen automatic implantable cardioverter-defibrillator and pacemaker placements, 10 ablation procedures, 300 dental procedures, and more than a thousand clinical evaluations.Extensive donations of medical and surgical supplies for the volunteer effort came from a variety of companies and institutions, including Medtronic, the UCLA Health System, Argon Medical Devices, Cook Medical, AGA Medical Corp., PFM Medical and many others."I am proud to be a physician at UCLA," said Alejos, whose family is originally from Peru. "The medical knowledge of the physicians is exceeded only by the compassion that I witness in every team member working with Corazones con Esperanza."For more news, visit the UCLA Newsroom.
- UCLA Medical Group ranked among top physician organizations in stateFor the fourth consecutive year, the UCLA Medical Group has been rated one of California's top-performing physician organizations by the Integrated Healthcare Association. Rankings are based on important health care quality measures, including preventive care, chronic care management, patient satisfaction and use of information technology to support safer care."There is an intense national effort to begin providing and acting on the kind of care measures in which the UCLA Medical Group already excels," said Dr. Thomas E. Sibert, president of the UCLA Faculty Practice and Medical Group and a UCLA associate vice chancellor. "We are proud to continue to do as well for our patients as we have, and we continue to commit to be at the vanguard of this kind of activity. UCLA has been justifiably proud of its capacity to treat the most complex illnesses. We are also proud to be among the most proficient in the more usual types of care. It is very rare to be able to claim both."The best performers — those who scored in the top 20 percent overall — were selected from among the 230 physician groups participating in the association's Pay-for-Performance (P4P) program. UCLA was one of 46 California medical groups chosen and one of only 10 in the Los Angeles area. Integrated Healthcare's P4P program, the largest physician incentive program in the United States, enables physician groups to receive financial rewards from participating health plans based on their performance on quality measures.According to the association, the top performing physician groups are leaders in the use of evidence-based health care processes and health information technology that result in better care for patients."What we do is to continuously improve on the care being provided to patients," said Dr. Samuel A. Skootsky, medical director of the UCLA Medical Group and Faculty Practice Group. "This is important for preventive and chronic care, as well as patient satisfaction. We work hard on behalf of our patients to achieve these results.""Consumers and purchasers of health care in California expect their providers to continually improve the quality and affordability of care provided," said Don Crane, chief executive officer of the California Association of Physician Groups. "These top performing physician groups are outstanding examples of what organized physician groups can do as they implement policies and practices designed to produce better care and greater value for health care dollars."The Integrated Healthcare Association is a not-for-profit statewide collaborative leadership group made up of California health plans, physician groups and health care systems, as well as academic, consumer, purchaser, pharmaceutical and technology representatives. The association promotes quality improvement, accountability and affordability for the benefit of all California consumers through special projects, policy innovation and education. For more information, visit www.iha.org.The UCLA Medical Group is primarily composed of faculty physicians of the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. Organized in 1987, the medical group provides services to health plan members in most major HMOs and Medicare Advantage plans, as well as patients enrolled in PPOs, Medicare, state-sponsored and indemnity insurance plans and patients seen by referral. For more information, visit www.uclahealth.org or call 310-302-1300.For more news, visit the UCLA Newsroom.
- Do 'light' cigarettes deliver less nicotine to the brain than regular cigarettes?For decades now, cigarette makers have marketed so-called light cigarettes — which contain less nicotine than regular smokes — with the implication that they are less harmful to smokers' health. A new UCLA study shows, however, that they deliver nearly as much nicotine to the brain.Reporting in the current online edition of the International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology, UCLA psychiatry professor Dr. Arthur L. Brody and colleagues found that low-nicotine cigarettes act similarly to regular cigarettes, occupying a significant percentage of the brain's nicotine receptors.Light cigarettes have nicotine levels of 0.6 to 1 milligrams, while regular cigarettes contain between 1.2 and 1.4 milligrams.The researchers also looked at de-nicotinized cigarettes, which contain only a trace amount of nicotine (0.05 milligrams) and are currently being tested as an adjunct to standard smoking-cessation treatments. They found that even that low a nicotine level is enough to occupy a sizeable percentage of receptors."The two take-home messages are that very little nicotine is needed to occupy a substantial portion of brain nicotine receptors," Brody said, "and cigarettes with less nicotine than regular cigarettes, such as 'light' cigarettes, still occupy most brain nicotine receptors. Thus, low-nicotine cigarettes function almost the same as regular cigarettes in terms of brain nicotine-receptor occupancy."It also showed us that de-nicotinized cigarettes still deliver a considerable amount of nicotine to the brain. Researchers, clinicians and smokers themselves should consider that fact when trying to quit."In the brain, nicotine binds to specific molecules on nerve cells called nicotinic acetylcholine receptors, or nAChRs. When nerve cells communicate, nerve impulses jump chemically across gaps between cells called synapses by means of neurotransmitters. The neurotransmitters then bind to the receptor sites on nerve cells — in the case acetylcholine resulting in the release of a pleasure-inducing chemical called dopamine. Nicotine mimics acetylcholine, but it lasts longer, releasing more dopamine."It can cause specific neurons to communicate and thus increases dopamine for an extended period of time," Brody said. "Most scientists believe that's