Radiation Therapy

ARLINGTON, Texas - With a white mesh mask draped over his face, Steve Hawkins lies perfectly still as beams of radiation strike tumors in his brain. The treatment takes a single minute, but Hawkins, whose lung cancer has spread to his brain, hopes it will add years to his life. "Unless something new comes along, the best I can hope for is to keep it in check," said Hawkins, a 54-year-old grandfather of three. "But I'm of the opinion that with all the statistics out there, there's no reason I can't be one of the positive ones."

There is little question that Maryland legislators intended to "substantially restrict" the ability of urologists and other prescribing doctors to refer patients to their own radiation centers, the state Court of Appeals wrote a few months ago. Why? Study after study shows that when doctors profit from expensive radiology procedures, they order too many of them. Medicos who refer cancer patients to self-owned radiation centers "increase the use of services and costs substantially" and don't improve care, according to research published in the New England Journal of Medicine in the 1990s.

In the deserts of the Middle East, the giant yellow Israeli scorpion is a ruthless hunter whose bite can bring on fever, convulsions, coma and, sometimes, heart failure in humans unlucky enough to run afoul of it. But the same venom that has earned this 4-inch-long arthropod the name "deathstalker" may be the key to longer life for humans under attack from an even more insidious predator. In a study published in last month's issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology, researchers made a version of the venom and used it in a new treatment for a deadly brain cancer called glioma.

Dr. Jeffery A. Williams, associate professor of neurosurgery and oncology at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine who devised a method of treating brain tumors with radiation that spared surrounding tissue, died Saturday of a heart attack while exercising at the hospital's fitness center. He was 50. The Canton resident was one of the world's foremost radiosurgeons and director of stereotactic radiosurgery, a division of the department of neurosurgery at Hopkins that treats tumors with focused radiation.

Dr. Patrick C. Walsh, director of urology at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, will share the prestigious Charles F. Kettering Prize for his innovations in prostate cancer surgery.The award, sponsored by General Motors Corp., is considered a major prize in the field of cancer research. It is given to people who have made the most outstanding contributions to the diagnosis and treatment of cancer.Walsh will share the award with Dr. Malcolm A. Bagshaw of Stanford University, a radiation oncologist credited with major advances in radiation therapy for prostate cancer.

A Carroll County jury has awarded $300,000 to a Westminster woman after deciding that her oral surgeon, an Arbutus-based laboratory and its pathologist failed to diagnose her oral cancer properly more than four years ago.The jurors found Friday that the co-defendants -- Maryland Medical Laboratory Inc., now known as Quest Diagnostics Inc.; its pathologist Martin Lunin; and Westminster oral surgeon Donald B. Lurie -- breached the standard of care in their...

For years, doctors have urged older men with early-stage, low-risk prostate cancer to "watch and wait" -- skip treatment until tests showed the cancer was growing aggressively. Now, a study suggests there's a significant benefit from treating men older than 65 surgically or with radiation therapy. "We found that men who had either a radical prostatectomy or radiation therapy within six months of their prostate cancer diagnosis were 30 percent less likely to die than those who did not undergo treatment," said Yu-Ning Wong, a medical oncologist at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia and lead author of the study.

Older men with early-stage prostate cancer may be better off waiting and having regular checkups and tests to monitor their cancer than having surgery or radiation therapy, says a new report.The study in yesterday's Journal of the American Medical Association is likely to stir controversy among doctors and the public about the effectiveness of surgery and radiation to treat prostate cancer, the most common kind of cancer among American men.Surgery and radiation for men older than 60 with early stages of prostate cancer may not help them live longer and may put them at risk for complications, particularly impotence and incontinence, which may "severely degrade quality of life," the study said.

Engineering:William E. Kallas has been named vice president/director of marketing at the Irving, Texas, headquarters of Greiner Inc. Kallas has spent 17 years in the engineering company's local offices, most recently as manager of marketing and sales for the Northeast and Midwest United States. Barbara F. Johnson has been named sales representative for Ceiling Seal Inc., a ceiling tile resurfacing company and a division of Copeland Construction Services Inc., with corporate headquarters in Columbia.

Few people are so popular that they are known solely by their first name. But that's how it was with Cindy.Walk into the county office building and ask for Cindy, and people would know you were talking about the woman who worked in the County Council office.Courteous, kind, prompt and efficient, Cindy had a perpetual hint of a smile that sometimes grew into an outright grin. A sign of welcome, it sometimes signaled amusement about something she had just heard or read. Cindy was a voracious reader.