Intensive Care

Stories of life and death told against a background of hospital gowns, fluorescent lights and the worried words of loved ones hoping for the best are nothing new to many Baltimore viewers. Hundreds of thousands tuned in when ABC News took viewers inside Johns Hopkins Hospital on its 2000 documentary series, "Hopkins 24/7," as well as a sequel in 2007. But Baltimore's Mercy Medical Center is the focus this week in a new docu-series, "NICU," premiering at 10 p.m. Thursday July 15 on the Discovery Health cable channel.

It seemed so obvious: Patients in intensive care improve faster if doctors and nurses set specific goals for their recovery. But until two years ago, no one had explicitly tried this approach. Now, a Johns Hopkins University study has found that setting daily goals for all patients can help them get better sooner. The method Hopkins tested also requires that everyone involved in a patient's care - doctors, residents, nurses, attending physicians, pharmacists and others - go on rounds together, visiting each patient.

Though it remains a common killer in poor regions of the world, tetanus has all but disappeared in the United States, thanks to vaccines and booster shots that doctors urge everyone to get. But somehow, 71-year-old Estelle Driver of Halethorpe managed to go decades - perhaps all her life - without a tetanus shot. This summer, she faced the consequences after she fell on a garden stake and developed a raging tetanus infection that nearly took her life. The symptoms didn't occur right away.

The United States will soon be forced to make brutal choices about rationing health care as the costs continue to outpace society's ability to pay for treatments, a Johns Hopkins anesthesiologist told a national conference yesterday.While he did not offer a rationing plan of his own, Dr. Mark C. Rogers said intensive-care physicians may have to curtail "futile attempts at saving lives" and the use of experimental drugs, some of which cost $3,000 per dose, if there is little chance the drugs will work.

Annapolis Mayor Alfred A. Hopkins was moved from intensive care last night at Washington Hospital Center and his condition was upgraded from serious to fair as he continued to recover from triple bypass heart surgery.The mayor underwent the nearly six-hour operation Monday afternoon after a fainting spell last week led doctors to discover he had a blocked coronary artery. He was in intensive care for less than 24 hours before being moved to the hospital's cardiac care unit, a hospital spokeswoman said.

A 28-year-old West Baltimore woman, charged in a warrant in the Jan. 5 beating death of 2-year-old Dion Dixon in Baltimore, has been arrested in Georgia.Verlinda Timmons, of the 1600 block of Druid Hill Ave., was arrested late yesterday afternoon at a house in Valdosta, city police said.The house where Timmons was arrested is the home of relatives of her husband, Keith Anthony Hamlin, 28, who also has been charged in a warrant in the boy's death. Dion died of severe head injuries.Police said Timmons, daughter of the child's foster mother, and Hamlin were watching the boy at their Druid Hill Avenue home two days before his death.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- Michael Brown Jr. sits in a small swing, his hands clenched and legs rigid as he stares into the distance. He cries for no reason and ignores the world around him.Curiosity -- and crack -- robbed the 15-month-old toddler of a normal life.Almost five weeks ago, Michael ate pieces of crack cocaine that police say were left on a table in his mother's Pompano Beach apartment. The boy suffered violent seizures, which caused severe brain damage, and he lapsed into a coma.

25 Years Ago (Week of Oct. 5-11, 1969):* The 100-member Howard County School Custodians Association reviewed a proposal to affiliate itself with a labor union. The proposal was presented by the Service Employees International Union, AFL-CIO.* It was announced that Columbia area residents could continue to enroll in the Columbia Medical Plan through Oct. 31 without being required to provide evidence of insurability. The prepaid program would provide total coverage at no additional cost for in-hospital surgical, medical and intensive care.