Blood Supply

A dangerously low blood supply in the Baltimore metropolitan area has the American Red Cross worried that it may not have enough to meet hospital needs during the Fourth of July holiday."

Dr. Franz Xavier Groll, a retired physician who lived and practiced on Eager Street in downtown Baltimore's Mount Vernon neighborhood, died of pulmonary thrombosis April 2 at Keswick Multi-Care Center. He was 95. Born in Aalen in Germany, he was the son of a forest manager who was also a gamekeeper. He grew up at the time of Adolf Hitler's rise and was a member of the German Youth Movement. He studied medicine at the Ruprecht-Karl University of Heidelberg and served in the German army as a combat physician attached to a Panzer division.

I WAS distressed by the Joseph Feldschuh and Doron Weber comments on the safety of the blood supply (Other Voices, Nov. 29). This type of scare tactic only revives unfounded old fears that AIDS is a major threat to recipients of blood products. Its sole purpose was to frighten people into irrational behavior.Isn't it ironic that Feldschuh directs a personal blood storage bank that is suspiciously similar to the kind he recommends we all use to freeze our own blood for later use? This fact should not be overlooked.

Ibasically decided to treat the hip like an old car - if it still works, you may as well run it into the ground." FLOYD LANDIS, American cyclist now leading the Tour de France, who will undergo hip replacement surgery after the grueling race because of osteonecrosis, or bone death, a degenerative condition caused by lack of blood supply; he walks with a limp and is in chronic, debilitating pain but refuses to take medication for it

Although the risk of getting AIDS from blood transfusions has diminished, a major study of heart surgery patients has found that two were infected with the AIDS virus through blood transfusions from donors who slipped through screening tests since 1985.The study of 11,535 patients at three hospitals traced the infected blood to two donors who tested negative for human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, at the time of donation but later tested positive, said Dr. Kenrad E. Nelson, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health.

Facing an operation at St. Joseph Hospital last August, an 85-year-old Pikesville woman was told by her surgeon to make two visits to the hospital ahead of time, to bank a couple of units, or pints, of her own blood, which would be returned to her after surgery.She had not given blood in years, not since World War II, in fact, and she was nervous. But in the age of AIDS, she said, she understood "that my own blood was the safest kind."Experts will tell you that the U.S. blood supply is safer than ever, that careful screening of potential donors weeds out most of those who might be infectious, that new testing techniques enable blood banks to find and eliminate units that carry microbes of deadly disease, that allegations to the contrary undermine efforts to maintain an adequate supply of blood donated by healthy volunteers.

Ibasically decided to treat the hip like an old car - if it still works, you may as well run it into the ground." FLOYD LANDIS, American cyclist now leading the Tour de France, who will undergo hip replacement surgery after the grueling race because of osteonecrosis, or bone death, a degenerative condition caused by lack of blood supply; he walks with a limp and is in chronic, debilitating pain but refuses to take medication for it

A 41-year-old woman who police said caused a three-car accident on Saturday by driving through a stop sign in Pasadena died yesterday of her injuries, county police reported.Jan Foster Higgins, of the 2900 block of E. Almondbury Court in Pasadena, was pronounced dead at 9 a.m. at the Maryland Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore. Police said she suffered head injuries.The accident occurred Saturday about 1:30 p.m. when police said Ms. Higgins, driving a 1987 Plymouth Horizon east on Countryside Drive, failed to stop at a stop sign at the intersection of Edwin Raynor Boulevard.

THERE ARE 20,000 hemophiliacs in the United States. Ten thousand of them are infected with HIV. Many of those infections PTC could and should have been prevented.In the early 1980s, the nation's public health system had strong evidence the blood supply was contaminated with the virus that causes AIDS. It didn't have absolute proof, but by 1983 the warnings were as loud and intense as screams. And yet little action was taken. Blood donors were not properly screened. Patients were not warned about the risks.

Is the U.S. blood supply too safe for its own good? Some safety experts say the government, Red Cross and other blood suppliers have become too cautious, excluding too many donors and adding too many safeguards. The result: Fewer people qualify to give blood, at a time when the supply barely meets the demand. The debate highlights the growing conflict between blood safety and blood supply. The tension has heated up in recent years as shortages have become more common. Blood bank officials warn that in a crisis, hospitals could run out altogether.

Two revolutionary new drugs are in hospital pharmacies this week, a tangible sign that years of research into targeted approaches to fighting cancer are finally paying off, at least in a limited way. The new drugs are a far cry from the breakthrough that was predicted in 1998, when Nobel laureate James Watson was quoted as saying cancer would be cured "in two years" as a result of laboratory evidence that tumors would vanish if their blood supply was...

Is the U.S. blood supply too safe for its own good? Some safety experts say the government, Red Cross and other blood suppliers have become too cautious, excluding too many donors and adding too many safeguards. The result: Fewer people qualify to give blood, at a time when the supply barely meets the demand. The debate highlights the growing conflict between blood safety and blood supply. The tension has heated up in recent years as shortages have become more common. Blood bank officials warn that in a crisis, hospitals could run out altogether.

Cases of West Nile disease jumped by more than one-third over the past seven days, and two people have developed encephalitis after receiving transfusions tainted with the virus, federal health officials said yesterday. Infections rose from 2,878 a week ago to 4,137 as of yesterday. The drastic increase of 1,259 cases in a week is in keeping with predictions by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that this year's West Nile season would probably break last year's record. With a few weeks remaining in the season, there are 19 fewer cases than the 4,156 recorded for all of last year.

Dr. Judah Folkman felt a building excitement as he sat in the third row of a cavernous Chicago exhibit hall, where more than 5,000 scientists waited to learn if his decades-old theory was right: Can you really fight cancer by blocking tumors' blood supply? Several anti-tumor drugs based on that premise seemingly hadn't worked. Avastin, the Genentech drug Folkman was waiting to hear about, had once been among them - failing to help terminal breast cancer patients. But as the Harvard University researcher listened to the latest results last week, it seemed clear that Avastin was responsible for modest but striking results: It had extended the lives of colon cancer patients on chemotherapy by about five months.

Editor's note: Sadly, USA Today has decided to drop CNN talk show host Larry King's long-running column later this month, calling it a casualty of a redesign of the paper. Fortunately for King fans, The Sun's Arthur Hirsch and David Folkenflik have obtained a draft believed to be his final submission. Although we cannot vouch for its authenticity, it is printed here for posterity: Can Omar Vizquel play shortstop or what? ... For my money, the Theory of Evolution still holds up ... Tellya what, Ella Fitzgerald, may she rest in peace, could sing at my birthday party anytime ... Ever notice how copy machine repair guys always wear short-sleeve dress shirts?

BLOOD shortages around the country have led the government to set up the first daily nationwide system for monitoring the supply. It's a recognition that the situation will worsen next month when tighter restrictions on blood donations take effect to protect against the possible spread of the human form of mad cow disease from Europe. The number of available American donors will shrink by 9 percent with the exclusion of people who have spent extended periods in Britain and Europe since 1980.

As the American Red Cross plans sweeping changes in the way it collects and tests blood, the Baltimore-Washington chapter stands a good chance of becoming one of a handful of centers with a key role in protecting the blood supply from blood-borne diseases.Dr. Paul Ness, director of blood services for the Chesapeake and Potomac Region, said yesterday that several factors put the chapter in an excellent position to become one of the regional centers responsible for testing donated blood for agents that spread AIDS, hepatitis and other diseases.

Cases of West Nile disease jumped by more than one-third over the past seven days, and two people have developed encephalitis after receiving transfusions tainted with the virus, federal health officials said yesterday. Infections rose from 2,878 a week ago to 4,137 as of yesterday. The drastic increase of 1,259 cases in a week is in keeping with predictions by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that this year's West Nile season would probably break last year's record. With a few weeks remaining in the season, there are 19 fewer cases than the 4,156 recorded for all of last year.

BLOOD is always in short supply in this region, but there is an acute shortage this summer that will likely get worse in August. The American Red Cross, which collects blood for hospitals, is begging businesses, churches and other organizations to sponsor blood drives to head off a possibly disastrous situation. Demand for blood is generally high here. Baltimore is home to major organ transplant centers. And transplant surgeries generally require sizable transfusions. A liver transplant, for example, can require between 50 and 100 units of fresh blood.

Blood donations in the Maryland area are less than half of normal as the Fourth of July holiday approaches, and the American Red Cross is pleading for donors. Particularly needed are types B and O positive blood throughout the Greater Chesapeake and Potomac Region, which serves about 80 hospitals in Maryland, northern Virginia, southern Pennsylvania and Washington. Blood supplies routinely drop in the summer, when regular donors go on vacation. Meanwhile, demand increases as traffic accidents peak around the summer holiday weekends.