Drs. David Kulber and Myles Cohen seek to provide families living in poverty with fully funded, world class hand reconstruction and state-of-the-art surgical care. Find out more in this video and witness their extraordinary work on a young Ethiopian boy’s deformed hands. For more about hand surgery, meet former fire captain Larry Davis, who turned to Dr. Kulber to rebuild his hands after they were nearly destroyed in a horrific blaze. His moving story, In Good Hands, appears in the Winter 2012 issue of Discoveries magazine.
Deep Brain Stimulation: Before and After
Born with a tiny flaw in his genetic code, Michael Sharp spent his early teenage years afflicted with debilitating spasms and constant pain. His nightmare ended with a revolutionary therapy for Parkinson’s disease and movement disorders: deep brain stimulation. This video, shot by Michael’s neurologist Michele Tagliati, MD, who heads Cedars-Sinai’s Movement Disorders Program, follows the young dystonia patient at age 16 before DBS, then three and 12 months later. Read Michael’s remarkable story, Sharp Focus, in the Winter 2012 edition of Discoveries magazine.
The AHSP and the Power of Happenstance
What happens when we create a space that allows neuroscientists and cardiologists to mingle freely under one roof? Paths cross, unplanned conversations happen, and ideas take flight. That’s the goal behind Cedars-Sinai’s Advanced Health Sciences Pavilion. Take a virtual tour of the facility with your guide Sidney Poitier, then read about how today’s best research spaces are being designed to foster spontaneous interdisciplinary encounters and creativity in The Power of Happenstance, from the Winter 2012 issue of Discoveries magazine.
Brain surgery takes much more skill than properly placing sutures in a foam skull, but aspiring doctors have to start somewhere, as 140 seventh- and eighth-grade LA-area students learned at the 2011 Brainworks event at Cedars-Sinai. For more about this annual science education offering organized by the Department of Neurosurgery, read Brain Works! in the Summer 2011 issue of Discoveries magazine.
An innovative artificial valve recently approved by the FDA offers new hope for those with a serious heart condition who can’t undergo open heart surgery. The valve implantation procedure currently being tested at Cedars-Sinai’s Heart Institute and featured in this video involves placing an artificial valve inside a thin tube, or catheter, which is then inserted through a small incision. The catheter is threaded along the arteries all the way to the heart, where the artificial valve is precisely positioned inside the patient’s defective aortic valve and deployed. For more about this treatment and its impact on patients, read former professional rollerskater Constance Alexander’s story, Skate of Grace, in the Summer 2011 edition of Discoveries magazine.