PubMed Health⌕ Search

Biomedical subjects

R Ladd

Publications and source records attributed to R Ladd.

6 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2001

Infants, the dead donor rule, and anencephalic organ donation: should the rules be changed?

When parents learn that their baby will be anencephalic, tragic choices must be made concerning how aggressively the infant should be treated. The parents' acceptance of the seriousness of the condition is often accompanied by their desire to donate the child's organs as a way of making an anencephalic's brief existence seem meaningful. Current U.S. law precludes parents from choosing organ donation, however, unless the child meets the "whole brain death" definition. Critics of restrictive organ donation policies founded on the whole brain death definition have responded in two ways. Some have proposed revisions that would broaden this definition of death. Others have appealed to interpretations that allow organ procurement from non-heart-beating donors and argue that this interpretation should be applied to anencephalics. We will consider both responses to policies restricting anencephalic organ donation by addressing international legal perspectives on whether a "duty to rescue" exists in this context and whether the need for increased organ donation is so urgent that it is justified to adopt less stringent guidelines overall. Finally, we will focus on the issue of the limits of parental decision making on behalf of anencephalics.

Anencephaly↗
PubMed1987

Megatrends in hospital information systems.

The "megatrends" identified for hospital information system in this article require an innovative shift in hospital management perspective. Hospital chief executive officers and decision-makers must adopt a new model for planning and utilizing hospital information systems resources. Because of changes in the healthcare environment, prospective payment strategies for using information are very different from former retrospective reimbursement methods. The purpose of this article has been to identify emerging "megatrends" for structuring future hospital information systems. The primary causes of these significantly different demands is the prospective payment system. Medicare DRGs will probably expand into an all-encompassing payment plan which will alter the essence of hospital information systems. This article has reviewed the challenges of these "megatrends," and provided some preliminary management strategies for addressing these new demands on healthcare professionals.

Hospital Administration↗
PubMed1984

A comparison of dimaprit, nordimaprit, methylamine and chloroquine as inhibitors of mitogen-induced lymphocyte activation.

Methylamine and chloroquine both 'lysosomotropic' agents (i.e. agents which sequester in lysosomes) caused a dose-related inhibition of mitogen-induced lymphocyte activation in the concentrations which have previously been shown to increase the pH of lysosomes. The dose-response curves of inhibition of mitogen-induced lymphocyte activation for chloroquine and methylamine are very steep and are similar to the dose-response curves obtained with dimaprit and nordimaprit, but very different from the flat dose-response curves previously described for histamine. Approximate IC50 values were methylamine 6.4 mM, dimaprit 0.13 mM, nordimaprit 0.03 mM and chloroquine 18 microM. It is suggested that the mechanism of action of methylamine and chloroquine may be related to their lysosomotropic action and consequent interference with ligand-receptor processing, and that dimaprit and nordimaprit but not histamine may act by a similar mechanism.

Cells, Cultured↗