Ultrasound

State Sen. Larry Farnese wants to ensure that government-mandated physical exams are an equal opportunity invader of privacy. Farnese (D., Phila.) says he plans to introduce a bill next week requiring men combating erectile dysfunction (ED) to undergo similar tests. That's in response to the widely criticized House Bill 1077 - supported by Gov. Corbett but now stalled after opposition by medical organizations - that would require invasive pre-abortion ultrasounds for women.

WILLIAM F. Buckley, a man who made love to the English language, would have raised his patrician eyebrows at people who call mandatory transvaginal ultrasounds "rape. " It's not that I think he'd agree with laws that force women to undergo the procedure. No, it's the deliberate manipulation/mutilation of words for partisan purposes that would have disturbed the Great Right Hope. "Rape" conjures up images of violence, blood, bruising and shattered lives, (or, for that matter, frat boys about as drunk as their passed-out "dates")

As team doctor for the Philadelphia Eagles and the Philadelphia Flyers, Arthur R. Bartolozzi is used to reviewing a stream of medical products touted to help athletes recover from injury. Nothing he had seen had speeded up the healing of fractures. Until now. Over the last year, Bartolozzi, an orthopedic surgeon, has tried a small, palm-sized device that bombards a fracture with ultrasound. He has used the unit on six patients, including two professional athletes, and all have had good results, he said.

As soon as the Food and Drug Administration announced approval of a powerful ultrasound machine to help diagnose suspicious breast lumps, women around the country began calling their doctors. "Do you have the machine? Who does?" they asked. The FDA's action last week and clamor for the machine should pressure American physicians to stop relying on biopsy - a minor but costly, painful surgery - to distinguish cancerous from noncancerous lumps. The FDA says the high-definition ultrasound device, made by Advanced Technology Laboratories of Seattle, could reduce by 40 percent the 700,000 biopsies performed annually in this country.

A Philadelphia court of common pleas jury on Friday awarded $78.5 million to a woman whose 3-year-old son suffers from cerebral palsy because of what the jury found were faulty diagnostic procedures by Pottstown Memorial Medical Center, where the child was delivered. Lawyers for the woman, 34-year-old Victoria Upsey, said she arrived at the hospital in August 2008 with signs of complications that caused her unborn child to be deprived of oxygen. Their experts contended during the trial that a prompt delivery could have averted the problem, but that the physician handling the case initially concluded that the baby already had died after performing an ultrasound.

The Food and Drug Administration approved a powerful ultrasound yesterday to help doctors determine when lumps in women's breasts are noncancerous, so those women can skip a common surgical cancer test. Advanced Technology Laboratories has predicted that its High-Definition Imaging, or HDI, ultrasound eventually will cut by 40 percent the number of breast biopsies performed annually in the United States. Of the 700,000 women who annually undergo biopsies, 180,000 are diagnosed with breast cancer.

Through Oct. 17, The Inquirer will mark Breast Cancer Awareness Month by publishing a profile a day of transformative moments reported by patients. The series will culminate in a special Inquirer section Thursday, and can be viewed at www.philly.com/breastcancer . "2012 was supposed to be my year!" says Amy Kuhnel of Kettering, Ohio. "I recently got engaged to the man of my dreams. We bought our first house together, and I got my dream job. I also turned 40, so I went in February to get my first mammogram.

Interspec Inc., the Ambler maker of medical ultrasound systems, said yesterday that third-quarter sales dropped because of the sale of its Norwegian subsidiary. But its profits more than doubled, largely because of a $219,000 tax credit. Excluding the credit, profits jumped nearly 50 percent to $304,000, from $204,000. Edward Ray, chairman, said acceptance of Interspec's Apogee CX, a color ultrasound system, had been a major factor in the improved performance. He said the firm's Echo ultrasound division, which produces transducers and probes, also performed strongly during the quarter.

LAST WEDNESDAY, Virginia Gov. Bob O'Donnell backed off signing a law that would have required invasive, trans-vaginal ultrasounds for many women seeking abortions, but only after his state became a national laughingstock. Now Pennsylvania's state legislators apparently want to bask in ridicule and protest. A bill in the state House of Representatives, with 120 co-sponsors, would require any woman who wants an abortion to first get an ultrasound at her own expense. Some of the bill's supporters argue that H.B. 1077 doesn't specifically call for probes into private parts.

CAPE CANAVERAL ASTRONAUTS TAKE A WALK IN SPACE Two Discovery astronauts ventured into the shuttle's open cargo bay today on the third U.S. spacewalk in less than a year. Carl Walz and Jim Newman planned to test techniques and some two dozen tools for another shuttle crew that will be dispatched in December to repair the Hubble Space Telescope. It was the third in a series of inflight training sessions which NASA instituted to build U.S. spacewalking experience after a shuttle crew had trouble rescuing a satellite in May 1992.