Procedure

ARLINGTON, Texas -- No longer able to withstand the pain and numbness that have followed him much of this year, Orioles third baseman Cal Ripken will undergo back surgery this morning, ending his season.To alleviate the nerve condition that twice sent Ripken onto the disabled list this year, Dr. Henry Bohlman will perform what is expected to be a 2 1/2-hour procedure, beginning at 10 a.m. at Case Western Reserve University Hospital in Cleveland, the team announced. Orioles officials were told Ripken will be hospitalized for at least three days and unable to resume normal activities for about a month.

The Maryland Senate voted yesterday to ban a late-term abortion procedure, the first time either chamber of the General Assembly has approved a major abortion restriction since the U.S. Supreme Court's 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision.The 25-22 vote sends the measure to the House, where another close vote is expected if the issue reaches the floor.Gov. Parris N. Glendening has pledged to veto the legislation because it does not include an exception to allow the procedure -- termed "partial-birth abortion" by opponents -- to protect a mother's health.

NO matter how they phrase it, anti-abortion advocates' efforts to craft a bill banning so-called "partial-birth" abortions fail to pass constitutional muster. When the measure comes up for a vote in the House Environmental Matters Committee, it should be killed.Maryland's attorney general says the most recent effort is unconstitutional on several grounds. It is a back-door attempt by abortion opponents to chip away at the legal right of a woman to have the procedure in this state.Abortion decisions are best left to a woman and her physician.

DALLAS -- For five days, the baby endured a hacking cough and runny nose. When her fever suddenly spiked to 104 degrees, her parents dashed to the emergency room.Viral myocarditis, her doctors thought -- a rare ailment that develops after an ordinary virus wriggles into the heart. The body's immune system, in a desperate rally to clear the infection, attacks the very organ it is trying to save. Hours later, the child died.The grieving family asked for an autopsy.The findings astounded and distressed the doctors: The infant had fallen not to the tactics of a virus, but to dangerously contagious bacteria.

In a surprise vote that likely defuses an explosive State House issue, the Maryland Senate rejected an anti-abortion bill yesterday, as a handful of swing legislators decided the measure was too broadly drafted.After nearly two hours of debate that included graphic descriptions of abortion procedures, the Senate voted 26-21 to send the legislation back to committee - a rare move that appears to end General Assembly consideration of the matter this year.While Sen. Larry E. Haines, the bill's chief sponsor, promised to continue fighting for the bill, Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller had a concise assessment of the measure's chances this year:"It's over."

New treatment offered for enlarged prostateNorth Arundel Hospital's Department of Urology will offer a new outpatient procedure for men with enlarged prostates. It is cheaper and requires less recovery time than other treatments, such as medication and surgery.The procedure, transurethral microwave prostate thermotherapy, will be performed one day each month in a $1 million mobile unit leased through ProTherm LLC of Severna Park.The unit will be parked in the North Arundel Hospital's Physician's Parking lot behind the west lobby.

WASHINGTON -- For the second time in two years, the Senate has failed to override President Clinton's veto of a ban on a late-term abortion procedure that opponents call "partial birth."The vote yesterday was 64-36, three shy of the two-thirds needed to override. Maryland's Democratic senators, Barbara A. Mikulski and Paul S. Sarbanes, voted against an override.While the debate, the graphic charts, the anecdotal stories and the vote itself were familiar, the stark mathematics of the November elections loomed large over the Senate.

WASHINGTON -- Congress may be on the verge of adopting a new federal restriction on abortion, thanks to a two-year campaign by anti-abortion forces that has dramatically focused attention on a controversial method used to terminate pregnancies.Legislation banning this procedure -- which is performed in the middle to late stages of pregnancy and has been dubbed "partial-birth abortion" by its critics -- has gained nearly enough support in Congress to overcome an anticipated presidential veto.

When their 30-year-old son was diagnosed with a debilitating illness, Ed and Alana Combs might have had a brief minute of self-pity, but it faded quickly.The Westminster couple immediately went to work, trying to raise the $150,000 needed to pay for an experimental treatment that could prolong life and advance research into Becker muscular dystrophy. The progressive, genetic disease usually affects young adult men, destroying muscles and eventually the lungs. Life expectancy is about 40 years.

She clicks with the judgesSay "model," and the public too often thinks beautiful and dizzy. The reality is that a model needs to be courteous, punctual and hard-working. Baltimore model Jocelyn McCraw also happens to be talented and smart. The 15-year-old Western High sophomore is an honor-roll student and plays in the school band.She recently won the first round in an international model search and will compete in the Elite and Lee Jeans Model Look finals in New York with an eye to qualifying for the September global competition in France.

Reader Kayris wrote: "I found out today that my 2-year-old will most likely need eye surgery and an MRI before that. Any suggestions for making it easier for a child so young, and any suggestions to get ME through having to see my child under general anesthesia?" I sent her question to Dr. Michael Crocetti, director of pediatrics at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center. He wrote back some thoughts: "Having surgery or a medical procedure that requires sedation can be scary and very anxiety-provoking for the child and parents," he wrote.

While researching the multitude of questions that come with being a new mother, Tina Overton encountered one that made her dizzy: whether to circumcise her newborn son. She never had reason to think about it before, let alone consider an alternative. But quickly, Overton became familiar with a small but vocal minority of parents and researchers arguing against circumcision. After months of scouring books, articles and the Internet, she reasoned the procedure was unnecessary, painful - and a violation of her son's human rights.

Lung transplants - a treatment of last resort for cystic fibrosis - are rarely beneficial to children with that condition and are often harmful, according to a study released last week. Among 248 children who received a lung transplant over an 11-year period, only one clearly benefited while 167 were at a higher risk of dying after the procedure, Utah researchers reported in the New England Journal of Medicine. Dr. Julian Allen of Children's Hospital of Philadelphia called the findings "startling" in an editorial in the journal.

MEXICO CITY -- On the five-hour bus ride from Guadalajara to this capital city, Rocio Medeles cried over her misfortune. She was a 26-year-old single mother, pregnant by a man who was about to marry someone else. In the past, she would have been presented with a stark choice: Have the baby, or risk permanent damage to her health at one of Guadalajara's many underground abortion clinics. But in April, legislators decriminalized abortion in Mexico City's Federal District, about 200 miles away.

WASHINGTON -- Circumcision is an, ahem, uncomfortable topic. The traditional Jewish bris calls this medical procedure a sign of blessing on the newcomer. Ten out of 10 male infants seem to disagree. During World War II, American soldiers were often circumcised to prevent the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. From the 1950s to the mid-1970s, the circumcision of American newborn boys became increasingly common. Then a minor backlash set in, and circumcision rates declined for a time.

It's an embarrassing problem. Not painful or life-threatening. Just embarrassing and upsetting. And expensive. Stress incontinence - the tendency to leak urine when you sneeze, cough or lift a heavy object - affects as many as 3 million women in the United States, about a third of all those who experience any sort of urinary incontinence. The cause isn't clear. It could be a consequence of childbearing, hormonal changes at menopause or simple aging. But something weakens the muscles that support the bladder and control the flow of urine through the urethra below it. And under the mechanical stress of a cough, a laugh or just walking, urine slips out. Incontinence of all types becomes more and more common as we age, and sufferers spend $20 billion a year, by one estimate, on absorbent pads, drugs and surgery in an effort to cope.

Circumcising adult males in two African countries reduced their risk of contracting HIV by half, according to studies that could prompt calls for programs to encourage circumcision. Evidence from the clinical trials in Uganda and Kenya was so overwhelming that the National Institutes of Health closed them so researchers could offer the procedure to all participants. "This was pretty much of an unequivocal type of decision based on the data," Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, said at a news briefing yesterday.

The federal judge hearing death-row inmate Vernon L. Evans Jr.'s challenge to Maryland's lethal-injection procedures said yesterday that he might direct state corrections officials to "test the recruitment waters" in search of doctors or highly trained nurses to participate in state executions before he rules on whether to require the medical professionals' involvement. U.S. District Judge Benson E. Legg said that nine days of trial testimony, stretched over three months, had left "a hole in the record" regarding the availability of doctors and nurses trained and willing to monitor an inmate's level of consciousness and to perform a surgical procedure to establish an IV in a major vein.

WASHINGTON -- A Bush administration lawyer urged the Supreme Court yesterday to uphold the nation's first criminal ban on an abortion method, saying so-called "partial birth" abortions are "too close to infanticide" and not a medical necessity. "Safe alternatives are always available," U.S. Solicitor General Paul D. Clement said in defending a law passed by Congress in 2003. But two abortion-rights advocates argued that the ban, if put into effect, would unwisely limit the options of doctors who perform abortions in the second trimester and would expose some pregnant women to more dangerous surgery.

Doctor testifies nurse needed for execution Replacing a nursing assistant who starts the intravenous line used in lethal injections with a nurse anesthetist would put a more highly trained person in the position to tell whether something went wrong during an execution, an anesthesiologist said yesterday. Dr. Mark Heath, an anesthesiologist at Columbia University who was called to testify by lawyers for death row inmate Vernon Evans, has been sharply critical of Maryland's execution team members.