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Tag: iab-heart and cardiovascular diseases

  • 82-year-old Korean man has heart attack after choking on ‘live octopus’ dish | CNN

    82-year-old Korean man has heart attack after choking on ‘live octopus’ dish | CNN

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    Seoul, South Korea
    CNN
     — 

    An 82-year-old man in South Korea had a heart attack after choking on a piece of “live octopus,” or san-nakji, a local delicacy comprised of freshly severed – and still wriggling – tentacles.

    Fire station authorities in Gwangju, a city near the country’s southern tip, received a report on Monday morning that a piece of san-nakji had become stuck in a man’s throat, according to a fire station official.

    When first responders arrived on site, the man had a cardiac arrest, and they conducted CPR, the official said.

    The official did not say whether the man survived.

    San-nakji refers to a small octopus that is sliced and served raw, often eaten in South Korea’s coastal areas or seafood markets.

    Though the dish’s name translates to “live octopus,” this is slightly misleading – the octopus is killed before serving, with its tentacles cut into portions.

    However, it is served immediately after slicing, and is so fresh that the tentacles’ nerves are still active – causing the octopus to appear “live” as it continues moving on the plate.

    San-nakji is often served with sesame oil, sesame seeds, and sometimes ginger, and has a chewy texture.

    It made an appearance on a 2015 episode of Anthony Bourdain’s CNN series “Parts Unknown,” when the famed chef and television host traveled to South Korea to sample everything from soju to Korean fried chicken – and san-nakji, with Bourdain using his chopsticks to peel a sticky tentacle off the plate.

    The dish has also previously made headlines, with local media reporting multiple cases over the years of diners dying after choking or asphyxiating on “live octopus.”

    In perhaps the best-known case, dubbed the “octopus murder,” a South Korean man was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2012 for allegedly killing his girlfriend and claiming it was a san-nakji accident – before he was acquitted by the Supreme Court in 2013 for insufficient evidence.

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  • Lisa Marie Presley died of complications from prior weight-loss surgery, autopsy report shows | CNN

    Lisa Marie Presley died of complications from prior weight-loss surgery, autopsy report shows | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    A report by the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner states Lisa Marie Presley’s death in January was caused by a “sequelae of a small bowel obstruction.”

    A small bowel obstruction is a blockage in the small intestine, often because of things like scar tissue, a hernia or cancer. Without surgery, it can cause bowel tissue to die or perforate, leading to death.

    Presley’s autopsy report, obtained by CNN on Thursday, included the official opinion of deputy medical examiner Dr. Juan M. Carrillo, who attributed her small bowel obstruction to “adhesions (or, scar tissue) that developed after bariatric surgery years ago. This is a known long term complication of this type of surgery.”

    Carrillo also stated that he reviewed the autopsy toxicology results, which showed “therapeutic” levels of oxycodone in Presley’s blood – i.e., levels that are in the range of medically helpful, and not dangerous. He added that quetapine metabolite (used to treat depression, schizophrenia or manic episodes) and buprenorphine (a painkiller that can also be used to treat opioid addiction) were present but “not contributory to death.”

    “There is no evidence of injury or foul play. The manner of death is deemed natural,” Carrillo concluded.

    Dr. Michael Camilleri, a consultant and professor in the Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology at the Mayo Clinic, told CNN on Thursday that the medications found in Presley’s may “have slowed down the motility of the intestine and would have made it perhaps more likely” for it to get “obstructed by the adhesions.”

    “Unfortunately, adhesions can happen to anybody,” he added. “And just because there were these other medications on board doesn’t necessarily mean that the person was more prone to develop the complications.”

    Lisa Marie Presley, the only daughter of the late Elvis Presley and Priscilla Presley, died hours after being hospitalized following an apparent cardiac arrest on January 12. The medical examiner’s report also detailed that she was complaining of abdominal pain on the morning of her death.

    Dr. Folasade P. May, associate professor of medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and director of the Melvin and Bren Simon Gastroenterology Quality Improvement Program, told CNN Thursday that she suspects Presley “developed a cardiac arrest because she had a severe complication from the small bowel obstruction.” Neither doctor interviewed by CNN for this report was directly involved in Presley’s case.

    She was 54.

    Video shows Lisa Marie Presley on the Golden Globes red carpet

    “Priscilla Presley and the Presley family are shocked and devastated by the tragic death of their beloved Lisa Marie,” the family said in a statement at the time. “They are profoundly grateful for the support, love and prayers of everyone, and ask for privacy during this very difficult time.”

    Lisa Marie Presley’s last public appearance just days before her death was at the Golden Globe Awards, which she attended with her mother to support the Baz Luhrmann film “Elvis,” about her late father.

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  • Jesse Malin reveals he had rare spinal stroke that left him paralyzed | CNN

    Jesse Malin reveals he had rare spinal stroke that left him paralyzed | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Jesse Malin is a rocker well known for dancing and interacting with the crowds at his concerts, and he hopes to get back to that someday.

    But after experiencing a rare spinal cord stroke, Malin is currently paralyzed from the waist down.

    Malin told Rolling Stone that weeks after performing at New York’s famed Webster Hall in honor of the 20th-anniversary celebration of his solo debut “The Fine Art of Self Destruction” in March, he collapsed while out to dinner with friends to mark the one-year anniversary of the death of his best friend and former D Generation bandmate, Howie Pyro.

    Malin said he felt pain in his lower back that traveled to his heels before he found himself on the floor unable to move

    “Everybody was standing above me like in ‘Rosemary’s Baby,’ saying all these different things, and I was there not knowing what was going on with my body,” he said.

    According to the National Institute Neurological Disorders and Stroke, a spinal cord infarction “is a stroke within the spinal cord or the arteries that supply it. It is caused by arteriosclerosis or a thickening or closing of the major arteries to the spinal cord.”

    Malin was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital and talked to Rolling Stone from a New York University rehab facility where he is currently undergoing therapy.

    “This is the hardest six weeks that I’ve ever had,” he told the magazine.

    “I’m told that they don’t really understand it, and they’re not sure of the chances,” he said. “The reports from the doctors have been tough, and there’s moments in the day where you want to cry, and where you’re scared. But I keep saying to myself that I can make this happen. I can recover my body.”

    Malin’s manager David Bason and friends launched a fund on Wednesday to help pay for expenses as the singer is currently struggling financially since he can’t work.

    Malin said he has mixed feelings about having to receive help, despite the fact that he has fundraised for others in the past who have also gone through similar challenges.

    “I always felt that we have a voice with these microphones and with these guitars and with these venues to help each other out. But it’s very hard for me to take back and be that person,” he said. “I don’t want to be a burden, but I’m learning. Just laying here and not being able to walk, it’s very humbling.”

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  • Mental illness may put people under 40 at a greater chance of heart attack and stroke | CNN

    Mental illness may put people under 40 at a greater chance of heart attack and stroke | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Adults in their 20s and 30s with mental disorders have a higher chance of having a heart attack or stroke, according to a new study.

    The study published Monday in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology looked at the health data of more than 6.5 million people through the Korean National Health Insurance Service database.

    The people included in the new study ranged in age from 20 to 39 and underwent health examinations between 2009 and 2012. Their health was monitored until December 2018 for new onset heart attacks and stroke.

    About 13% of participants had some type of mental disorder — which included insomnia, anxiety, depression, somatoform disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, substance use disorder, eating disorders, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia or a personality disorder, according to the study.

    Those people younger than 40 with a mental disorder were 58% more likely to have a heart attack and 42% more likely to have a stroke than those with no disorder, the study found.

    “We have known for some time that mental health and physical health are linked, but what I find surprising about these findings is that these links were observable at such a young age,” said Dr. Katherine Ehrlich, an associate professor of behavioral and brain sciences at the University of Georgia. Ehrlich was not involved in the research.

    Coronary arterial disease and heart attacks are rare before the age of 40, so a study as large as this one was needed to see the relationship between mental health and such an unusual occurrence in young people, she said.

    Ehrlich said she would like to know more about the physical activity and diets of the people involved to understand better if those factors have an influence on the relationship between mental health conditions and heart attack and stroke.

    “For example, if you are chronically depressed, you may struggle to maintain a healthy diet and get adequate physical activity, which might in turn increase your risk for cardiac events over time,” she said.

    But the increased risk could not be attributed to lifestyle differences alone, as the authors controlled for factors including age, sex, high blood pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol, metabolic syndrome, chronic kidney disease, smoking, alcohol, physical activity and income, the study said.

    That doesn’t mean lifestyle should be ignored, however, said study author Dr. Eue-Keun Choi, a professor of internal medicine at Seoul National University College of Medicine in South Korea.

    “While lifestyle behaviours did not explain the excess cardiovascular risk, this does not mean that healthier habits would not improve prognosis,” Choi said in a statement. “Lifestyle modification should therefore be recommended to young adults with mental disorders to boost heart health.”

    One in eight people between ages 20 and 39 studied had some sort of mental illness, meaning a substantial number of people could be predisposed to heart attack and stroke, study author Dr. Chan Soon Park, a researcher at Seoul National University Hospital in South Korea said in a statement.

    That could point to a greater need for managing psychological conditions and monitoring heart health in those at risk, Park added.

    “If we can reduce the number of people living with chronic mental illness, we may find secondary benefits in future years regarding the number of people managing cardiac-related conditions,” Ehrlich said.

    It is important to note that the findings do not show that mental illness causes heart attacks or stroke, she added. But the research does indicate a risk factor to watch out for.

    There may be benefit in preventive measures to minimize risks, Ehrlich said, which can include maintaining a healthy diet and incorporating physical activity.

    Choi recommends that people with mental health conditions receive regular checkups as well.

    These findings may also emphasize the importance of addressing loneliness, she added.

    “Many individuals with mental illness suffer from social isolation and loneliness, and for years researchers have been sounding the alarm that loneliness is detrimental for physical health,” Ehrlich said.

    “Efforts to improve social connectedness among young people may be critical to addressing the rising rates of cardiometabolic conditions in adulthood,” she added.

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  • Damar Hamlin cleared to resume football activities after January cardiac arrest | CNN

    Damar Hamlin cleared to resume football activities after January cardiac arrest | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin, who has been cleared to resume football activities, said Tuesday his cardiac arrest during an NFL game in January was caused by commotio cordis.

    Hamlin went into cardiac arrest after making a tackle and appearing to be hit with a helmet in his chest during the first quarter of the Bills’ game against the Cincinnati Bengals on January 2.

    Commotio cordis can occur when severe trauma to the chest disrupts the heart’s electrical charge and causes dangerous fibrillations.

    “I died on national TV in front of the whole world,” Hamlin said in his first session with reporters since the injury. “I lost a bunch of people in my life. I know a bunch of people who lost people in their lives. I know that feeling. That right there is the biggest blessing of it all – for me to still have my people and my people to still have me.”

    The 25-year-old has been at the Bills’ practice facility in Orchard Park, New York, participating in voluntary offseason workouts this week, according to the team.

    “He is fully cleared,” Bills General Manager Brandon Beane told reporters. “He’s here.”

    Hamlin said he was blessed to have a wonderful medical staff who “treat me with the care of their children.”

    The safety said his heart is still in the game and he was announcing his comeback to the NFL.

    “I just want to show people that fear is a choice. You can keep going at something without having the answers and without knowing what’s at the end of the tunnel,” he said. “You might feel anxious – you might feel any type of way – but you just keep putting that right foot in front of the left one and you keep going. I want to stand for that.”

    Beane said that Hamlin had seen three separate specialists over the offseason, who all agreed that the player “is clear to resume full activities just like anyone else who was coming back from an injury.”

    “(Hamlin’s) in a great headspace to come back and make his return,” Beane added.

    Bills head coach Sean McDermott said the team is happy that Hamlin is back.

    “We’re super excited for Damar. He’s moving forward one step at a time here. He’s been cleared from a physical standpoint,” McDermott said.

    “We’ll provide all of the mental help we can from a mind, body and spirit standpoint so just happy for him that he’s been able to check some of those boxes to this point and we’re moving forward taking it one day at a time.”

    According to the American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology, if no underlying cardiac abnormalities are discovered through testing, athletes who have been resuscitated from commotio cordis may return to playing.

    Hamlin likely went through a lot of tests, including electrocardiograms and echocardiograms, before doctors cleared him to return to training.

    “What it basically means a few things. One is that his heart function returned to normal. He has no underlying problems with the anatomy of the heart itself, and he has no underlying electrical problems, so that’s the most important thing – and the way they figured that out over the last three-and-a-half months was to do a lot of tests,” CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta said on “CNN News Central.”

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  • Elite athletes with genetic heart disease can safely return to play with diagnosis and treatment, early study suggests | CNN

    Elite athletes with genetic heart disease can safely return to play with diagnosis and treatment, early study suggests | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    In a new study, most elite athletes with a diagnosed genetic heart disease did not experience serious or fatal symptoms of their condition, such as sudden cardiac death. The research suggests it can be “feasible” and “safe” for athletes to continue to participate in their sport.

    Among a sample of 76 elite athletes with a genetic heart disease who had competed or are still competing in either Division I university or professional sports, 73 out of the 76 did not experience a cardiac event triggered by their disease during the study period, according to researchers behind a late-breaking clinical trial presented Monday at the American College of Cardiology’s Annual Scientific Session Together With the World Congress of Cardiology.

    Among those elite athletes with a genetic heart disease, 40 of them – 52% – were asymptomatic, the study abstract finds.

    Over the years, researchers have become more aware of alarming reports about elite athletes experiencing heart problems, or even suddenly collapsing during games.

    “For athletes with genetic heart conditions, and I would add non-athletes, the tragedies occur when we don’t know of their condition,” said Dr. Michael Ackerman, a genetic cardiologist at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, who was a senior author of the new research. “When we know of their condition, and we assess the risk carefully and we treat it well, these athletes and non-athletes, they can expect to live and thrive despite their condition.”

    The new research has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal, but the findings suggest that many athletes with a genetic heart disease can decide with their health care professionals on whether to continue competing in their sport and how to do so safely, instead of being automatically disqualified due to their health conditions.

    “In sports, historically, we’ve been paternalistic and de-emphasize patient preference and risk tolerance, but we know that athletes come from all walks of life. They are intelligent and when there’s scientific uncertainty, their values should be incorporated in medical decision-making,” Dr. J. Sawalla Guseh, cardiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, who was not involved in the new study, said during Monday’s scientific session.

    “Shared decision-making when done well can have very favorable outcomes,” he said.

    Elite basketball, hockey, soccer and football players, were among the 76 athletes included in the new study, conducted by researchers at Mayo Clinic and other institutions in the United States. They wrote in their study abstract that this is the first study to their knowledge describing the experience of athletes competing at the NCAA Division I level or in professional sports with a known genetic heart disease that puts them at risk of sudden cardiac death.

    The athletes in the study were cleared for return-to-play at either a NCAA Division I school or at the professional level. They were studied over an average of seven years, and all had been diagnosed with a genetic heart disease in the past 20 years, being treated at either Mayo Clinic, Morristown Medical Center, Massachusetts General Hospital or Atrium Health Sports Cardiology Center.

    “Only three of them had a breakthrough cardiac event, which means after they were diagnosed and treated, they were still having an event,” said Katherine Martinez, an undergraduate student at Loyola University in Baltimore, who helped conduct the research as an intern in the Mayo Clinic’s Windland Smith Rice Sudden Death Genomics Laboratory.

    Fainting was the most common event, and one athlete received a shock with an implantable cardioverter defibrillator, or ICD. None of the athletes died.

    “The majority of these athletes went on to continue their career with no events at all,” Martinez said. But most of the athletes in the study – 55 of them, or 72% – were initially disqualified from competing by their primary provider or institution after their diagnosis. Most ultimately opted to return to play with no restrictions after undergoing comprehensive clinical evaluations and talking with their doctors.

    While each sports league has its own set of rules, historically, some people diagnosed with a genetic heart disease that puts them at an increased risk for sudden cardiac death have been restricted from competitive sports, the researchers wrote in their study abstract.

    “Just because you were given this diagnosis, doesn’t mean that your life, your career, the future that you see for yourself is over, but taking a second opinion from an expert who knows what they’re doing and is comfortable with shared decision-making is the next step,” said Martinez, who worked on the new research alongside her father, Dr. Matthew Martinez, director of Atlantic Health System Sports Cardiology at Morristown Medical Center and an author of the new research.

    Regarding the new study, “the take-home message is, if you have one of these findings, seek out an expert who’s going to help you identify a safe exercise plan for you and determine what level you can continue to safely participate in,” he said. “This is the next best step – the next evolution – of how we manage athletes with genetic heart disease.”

    Leaving their sport due to a genetic heart disease can be “very destructive” for athletes who have devoted their lives to excelling in competitions, said Dr. Lior Jankelson, director of the Inherited Arrhythmia Program at NYU Langone Heart in New York, who was not involved in the new research.

    Yet he added that these athletes still need to consult with their doctors and be watched closely because some genetic diseases could be more likely to cause a serious cardiac event than others.

    The new study highlights that “the majority of athletes with genetic heart disease could probably – after careful, meticulous expert risk-stratification and care strategy – participate in sports,” Jankelson said. “But at the same time, this is exactly the reason why these patients should be cared only in high-expertise genetic cardiology clinics, because there are other conditions that are genetic, that could respond very adversely to sports, and have a much higher risk profile of developing an arrhythmia during intense activity.”

    Separately, the NCAA Sports Science Institute notes on its website, “Though many student-athletes with heart conditions can live active lives and not experience health-related problems, sudden fatality from a heart condition remains the leading medical cause of death in college athletes.”

    For athletes with a genetic heart disease, their symptoms and their family history of cardiac events should be considered when determining their risks, said Dr. Jayne Morgan, a cardiologist with Piedmont Healthcare in Atlanta, who was not involved in the new research.

    “Certainly, there is concern with elite athletes competing and whether or not they are being screened appropriately,” Morgan said. But she added that the new research offers “some understanding” to the mental health implications for athletes with a genetic heart disease who may be required to step away from a competitive sport that they love.

    “This study, I think, begins to go a long way in identifying that we may not need to pull the trigger so quickly and have athletes step away from something that they love,” Morgan said.

    The new study is “timely” given the recent national attention on athletes and their risk of sudden cardiac death, Dr. Deepak Bhatt, director of Mount Sinai Heart in New York City, who was not involved in the research, said in an email.

    “These are some of the best data showing that the risk of return to play may not be as high as we fear,” Bhatt said about the new research.

    “Some caveats include that the majority of these athletes were not symptomatic and about a third had an implantable defibrillator,” he added. “Any decision to return to the athletic field should be made after a careful discussion of the potential risks, including ones that are hard to quantify. Input from experts in genetic cardiology and sports cardiology can be very helpful in these cases.”

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  • Despite toxic disaster, railroads still want single-person crews | CNN Business

    Despite toxic disaster, railroads still want single-person crews | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    The nation’s major freight railroads have long desired to have only one crew member, a lone engineer, in the cab of their locomotives. And that desire hasn’t changed despite the derailment of a Norfolk Southern train on February 3 that released toxic chemicals into the air, water and soil of East Palestine, Ohio, that is still being cleaned up.

    But that accident very well may have ended the railroad’s chances of getting that one-person crew goal.

    The rail safety legislation, introduced in Congress Wednesday with bipartisan support, would include a prohibition on single-person crews. There is no such existing law or federal regulation requiring both an engineer and a conductor to be on a train. Instead, it is only labor deals with the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and the transportation division of the Sheet Metal, Air, Rail, Transportation union (SMART-TD), which represents the conductors, that require at least one member of each union in the locomotive’s cab.

    The Association of American Railroads confirmed that its position in favor of one-person crews has not changed. It believes it will be more efficient, and just as safe, to have engineers responding to problems with trains by driving along tracks in trucks rather than riding in the cab of the locomotive.

    “The position on crew size has not changed. Railroads have been clear that they support fact-driven policies that address the cause of this accident and enhance safety,” said an AAR statement. “As we continue to review this bill, it is clear it includes many of the same wish list items AAR and others have clearly said would not prevent a similar accident in the future, such as the… arbitrary crew size rule. Railroads look forward to working with all stakeholders to meaningfully advance real solutions.”

    Union Pacific said the opposition to a two-person crew mandate does not mean the railroads don’t care about safety.

    “No data shows a two-person crew confined to a cab is safer, and train crew size should continue to be determined through collective bargaining,” a statement from UP. “Proposed legislation limits our ability to compete in a business landscape where technology is rapidly changing the transportation industry.”

    CSX also said it believes the decision on crew size should be decided in collective bargaining, not through legislation, but said it is not currently pursuing a change in crew size. Negotiations between the railroads and unions is not due to start again until 2024, and the railroads historically have negotiated deals that apply across the industry. The other two major freight railroads – Norfolk Southern and Burlington Northern Santa Fe – did not responded to questions about the legislation. But the AAR is the trade group that lobbies on their behalf.

    The AAR’s statement did not address the question as to whether that rule is now more likely to pass. But Jeremy Ferguson, president of SMART-TD, said this accident has completely changed the chances of getting the two-person crew requirement written into US law.

    “Absolutely,” he said when asked in an interview with CNN Business if he thinks the provision will now pass. “When an incident like this happens, it brings all the issues to light, how unsafe the rail industry truly is. I didn’t think we had any chance before this. The railroads and AAR do a very good job of lobbying in DC. So generally it’s difficult to get people to vote for something like this rule. But sometimes it takes a disaster to drive home the point. Any time you turn the TV on, there’s still an issue. It’s not going away.”

    The senators, both Democrat and Republican, sponsoring the rail safety bill say they’re hopeful there is now bipartisan support to change the law.

    “Rail lobbyists have fought for years to protect their profits at the expense of communities like East Palestine,” said Sen. Sherrod Brown, the Ohio Democrat. “These commonsense bipartisan safety measures will finally hold big railroad companies accountable, make our railroads and the towns along them safer, and prevent future tragedies, so no community has to suffer like East Palestine again.”

    “Through this legislation, Congress has a real opportunity to ensure that what happened in East Palestine will never happen again,” said Sen. J.D. Vance, the Ohio Republican who is a co-sponsor. “We owe every American the peace of mind that their community is protected from a catastrophe of this kind.”

    If the law is changed due to the East Palestine derailment, it won’t be the first disaster that changed rules and laws governing trains. In 2013, a runaway Canadian freight train carrying tanker cars of oil crashed in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, causing a massive fire that killed 47 people and destroyed 40 buildings in the town. Canada responded by changing its law to require two person crews on trains carrying hazardous materials.

    But calls to change the law in the United States because of that accident fell on deaf ears.

    The fact that there were three employees on the train that derailed in East Palestine — an engineer, a conductor and a trainee — did not prevent this accident from happening.

    The National Transportation Safety Board’s initial finding on the disaster was that a fire originally started when a rail car carrying plastic pellets was heated by a hot axle.

    After the fire started, the train passed three trackside detectors meant to determine if there is a problem causing overheating. But the first two did not signal a problem, even as the fire raised the temperature more than 100 degrees. The detectors are designed not to alert the crew until there is a 200-degree rise in the temperature detected. Finally the third detector registered a rise in temperature of more than 250 degrees, triggering an alarm in the locomotive’s cab.

    The NTSB said the engineer responded immediately to the alarm by applying the brakes in an attempt to stop the train, but the wheel bearing on the car that was on fire failed before he could bring the train to a halt, causing the derailment.

    Ferguson said that while the crew could not prevent this derailment from happening, there are an uncounted number of times that they detect a problem and prevent a derailment. He said not having the conductor on the train would miss many of those problems and cause many more derailments.

    “When a detector goes off, you stop the train and the conductor can walk back and check if there is an overheating axle and make an immediate decision,” Ferguson said. An engineer is not allowed to get out of the locomotive, even if it’s stopped. Only the conductor can check to see if what the problems is that triggered an alarm.

    But if the conductor is driving around in a truck, rather than riding in the cab of the locomotive, it could be an hour or more before the conductor gets there, and the axle might have cooled down. At that point, the conductor might have to send the train back on its way, according to Ferguson, even though the original problem tripping the heat detector — a faulty axle or bearing — is still a problem that could quickly cause a derailment.

    “So having a guy wandering around in the truck may cause a derailment,” said Ferguson.

    Beyond the problems of this kind, having a second person in the cab can just offer greater attention to detail during long train rides.

    “You’ve got two sets of ears and two set of eyes. It always helps,” Ferguson said.

    And it also helps in case of a medical emergency. In January, a CSX engineer suffered a heart attack while bringing a freight train into Savannah, Georgia, according to the engineers’ union. The conductor was able to recognize he was in distress, give him an aspirin and to call ahead to have an ambulance waiting for him in the rail yard.

    The engineer needed emergency bypass surgery, but survived the heart attack.

    “This happens more often than people realize,” Ferguson said. “It’s not necessarily always a heart attack. But having two people up there always pays dividend for the crew members themselves.”

    CSX confirmed the incident with one of its engineer having a heart attack occurred in January.

    “We commend the heroic actions of all CSX employees who render aid during any medical emergency,” said CSX’s statement.

    The fact that the current labor contracts require two crew members is little comfort to the engineers and conductors unions.

    They point out that under the Railway Labor Act, they can have a contract that is opposed by some or all of the rail unions imposed upon them by Congress, as happened this past December. While this current contract did keep the provision for two-person crews in place, that’s not necessarily going to be the case in all future contracts, even if the unions continue to make the issue a priority.

    Congress generally enacts what is recommended by a panel appointed by the president to propose a deal that hopefully both labor and management can accept. But it might have one or two provisions which are deal breakers for the unions, such as allowing single-person crews.

    “Given the wrong president, we could lose this in a hurry,” said Ferguson.

    The Federal Railroad Administration is also considering a rule that would require two-person crews. But Ferguson said getting the requirement written into law would be better than a simple regulation. An FRA regulation could be easier to change in a new administration than it would be to get a change in the law.

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  • Bempedoic acid improved heart health in patients who can’t tolerate statins, study finds | CNN

    Bempedoic acid improved heart health in patients who can’t tolerate statins, study finds | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Bempedoic acid may be an alternative for people who need to lower their cholesterol but can’t or won’t take statins, according to a large study published Saturday in the New England Journal of Medicine.

    Statins are the most commonly prescribed cholesterol-lowering drugs that help lower what’s known as the “bad” cholesterol, or low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol in the blood; more than 90% of adults who take a cholesterol-lowering medicine use a statin, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

    Statins are considered safe and effective, but there are millions of people who cannot or will not take them. For some people it causes intense muscle pain. Past research has shown anywhere between 7% and 29% of patients who need to lower cholesterol do not tolerate statins, according Dr. Steven Nissen, a cardiologist and researcher at the Cleveland Clinic and co-author of the new study.

    “I see heart patients that come in with terrible histories, multiple myocardial infarction, sometimes bypass surgery, many stents and they say, ‘Doctor, I’ve tried multiple statins, but whenever I take a statin, my muscles hurt, or they’re weak. I can’t walk upstairs. I just can’t tolerate these drugs,’ ” Nissen said. “We do need alternatives for these patients.”

    Doctors have a few options, including ezetimibe and a monoclonal antibody called a proprotein convertase subtilisin/kexin type 9, or PCSK9 inhibitors for short.

    Bempedoic acid, sold under the name Nexletol, was designed specifically to treat statin-intolerant patients. The FDA approved it for this purpose in 2020, but the effects of the drug on heart health had not been fully assessed until this large trial. The new study was funded in part by Esperion Therapeutics, the maker of Nexletol.

    For the study, which was presented Saturday at the American College of Cardiology’s Annual Scientific Session with the World Congress of Cardiology, Nissen and his colleagues enrolled 13,970 patients from 32 countries.

    All of the patients were statin intolerant, typically due to musculoskeletal adverse effects. Patients had to sign an agreement that they couldn’t tolerate statins “even though I know they would reduce my risk of a heart attack or stroke or death,” and providers signed a similar statement.

    The patients were then randomized into two groups. One was treated with bempedoic acid, the other was given a placebo, which does nothing. Researchers then followed up with those patients for up to nearly five years. The number of men and women in the trial were mostly evenly divided, and most participants, some 91%, were White, and 17% were Hispanic or Latino.

    The drug works in a similar way that statins do, by drawing cholesterol out of a waxy substance called plaque that can build up in the walls of the arteries and interfere with the blood flow to the heart. If there is too much plaque buildup, it can lead to a heart attack or stroke.

    But bempedoic acid is only activated in the liver, unlike a statin, so it is unlikely to cause muscle aches, Nissen said.

    In the trial, investigators found that bempedoic acid was well-tolerated and the percent reduction in the “bad” cholesterol was greater with bempedoic acid than placebo by 21.7%.

    The risk of cardiovascular events – including death, stroke, heart attack and coronary revascularization, a procedure or surgery to improve blood flow to the heart – was 13% lower with bempedoic acid than with placebo over a median of 3.4 years.

    “The drug worked in primary and secondary prevention patients – that is, patients that had had event and patients who were very high risk for a first event. There were a lot of diabetics. These were very high risk people,” Nissen said. “So the drug met its expectations and probably did a lot better than a lot of people thought it would do.”

    In the group that took bempedoic acid, there were a few more cases of gout and gallstones, compared with people who took a placebo.

    “The number is small, and weighing that against a heart attack, I think most people would say, ‘OK I’d rather have a little gout attack,’ ” Nissen said.

    Bempedoic acid had no observed effect on mortality, but that may be because the observation period was too short to tell if it had that kind of impact. Earlier trials on statins showed the same; it was only after there were multiple studies on statins that scientists were able to show an impact on mortality.

    Dr. Howard Weintraub, a cardiologist at NYU Langone Health who did not work on this study, said that while he knows some people will not consider a medication successful unless it reduces mortality, he thinks that is short-sighted.

    “I think there’s more to doing medicine then counting body bags,” Weintraub said.”Preventing things that can be life changing, crippling, and certainly change your quality of life forever going forward, and your cost of doing things going forward, I think is a good thing.”

    He was pleased to see the results of this trial, especially since the people in this study are often what he called “forgotten individuals” – the millions who could benefit from lowering their cholesterol, but can’t take statins.

    “It’s not like their LDL was 180 or 190 or 230, their LDL was 139. This is about average in our country,” Weintraub said. He said often doctors will just tell those patients to watch their diet, but he thinks this suggests they would benefit from medication.

    “Both groups primary and secondary prevention got benefit, which I think is impressive with the modest amount of LDL reduction,” Weintraub said.

    There are some limitations to this trial. It was narrowly focused on patients with a known statin intolerance. Nissen said the trial was not designed to determine whether bempedoic acid could be an alternative to statins.

    “Statins are the gold standard. They are the cornerstone. The purpose of this study was not to replace statins, but to allow an alternative therapy for people who simply cannot take them,” Nissen said.

    Bempedoic acid is a much more expensive drug than a statin. There are generic versions of statins and some cost only a few dollars. Bempedoic acid, on the other hand, has no generic alternative and a 30-day supply can cost more than $400, according to GoodRx.

    “I think what insurance companies need to recognize that even though this drug is going to cost more than statins, having a heart attack or a stroke or needing a stent is expensive. A 23% reduction in (myocardial infarctions) is a considerable reduction,” Weintraub said.

    In an editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine that accompanied the study, Dr. John H. Alexander, who works in the division of cardiology at Duke Clinical Research Institute, Duke Health, Durham said that doctors should take these results into consideration when treating patients with high cholesterol who can’t take statins.

    “The benefits of bempedoic acid are now clearer, and it is now our responsibility to translate this information into better primary and secondary prevention for more at-risk patients, who will, as a result, benefit from fewer cardiovascular events,” Alexander wrote.

    Dr. Manesh Patel, a cardiologist and volunteer with the American Heart Association who was not a part of the study, said that providers are already prescribing bempedoic acid for some patients, but with this new research, he thinks they will quickly be used with more statin-intolerant patients.

    “We continue to see that if we can lower your LDL significantly, we improve people’s cardiovascular health. And so we need as many different arrows in our quiver to try to get that done,” Patel said.

    Heart disease is the No. 1 killer for men and women in the world. One person dies every 34 seconds in the US from cardiovascular disease, according to the CDC. About 697,000 people in the US died from heart disease in 2020 alone – about the same number as the population of Oklahoma City.

    “Given the number of people that are eligible for statins, which are tens of millions of patients already, the number of people who cannot tolerate statins is in the millions,” Nissen said. “This is a big public health problem and I think we’ve come up with something that directly addresses this.”

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  • With a little ‘tickle,’ a new technology gives hope to stroke patients with paralysis | CNN

    With a little ‘tickle,’ a new technology gives hope to stroke patients with paralysis | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    For nearly a decade, Heather Rendulic hasn’t been able to use her left hand to feed herself or pick up something as light as a soup can – but that changed when she became part of a clinical trial that could radically improve the lives of people who’ve been paralyzed after a stroke.

    The results of that trial were published Monday in the journal Nature Medicine.

    Rendulic has a rare brain disease called cavernous angioma, a blood vessel abnormality that can cause stroke. She had series of them – five total – over a period of 11 months when she was just 22 years old that left her paralyzed on her left side.

    “The most challenging part of my condition is living one-handed in a two-handed world,” the Pittsburgh resident said.

    A stroke cuts off the blood supply to the brain, and cells start to die within minutes. A person can have paralysis if the stroke damages the part of the brain that sends messages to trigger muscles to move.

    Rendulic eventually regained some function on her left side, but she was still unable to use a fork or make a fist with that hand.

    In 2021, as a part of a joint project between the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University, researchers implanted a pair of thin metal electrodes along her neck.

    Doctors already use spinal cord stimulation technology to treat persistent pain. Research has shown that the technology could be used to restore leg movement after a spinal cord injury, but hand movements are a little trickier. A hand that functions properly has a unique kind of dexterity and a wide range of motion.

    For the trial, scientists implanted electrodes along the surface of the spinal cord that look like strands of spaghetti. The electrodes give tiny impulses that stimulate specific regions and activate nerve cells inside the spinal cord.

    “The sensory nerves from the arm and hand send signals to motor neurons in the spinal cord that control the muscles of the limb,” said study co-author Dr. Douglas Weber, a professor of mechanical engineering at the Neuroscience Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. “By stimulating these sensory nerves, we can amplify the activity of muscles that have been weakened by stroke. Importantly, the patient retains full control of their movements: The stimulation is assistive and strengthens muscle activation only when patients are trying to move.”

    This technology could work with a wide range of patients, the researchers said.

    Rendulic said the stimulation feels “kind of like a tickle.” It’s never painful, but it takes a little getting used to.

    As tiny black plastic boxes light up and flashing green lights travel up and down her arm, the device allows motion that would have been unthinkable years ago.

    Even on the first day, she had a new range of movement. She didn’t have to be shown how to open the hand or reach the arm, the researchers said. For more complex tasks, a little training was needed.

    “When the stimulation is on, I feel like I now have control of my arm and my hand again that I haven’t had in over nine years,” she said.

    Rendulic can lift her arm above her head, use a fork to bring food to her mouth, and fully open and close her fist. The other person participating in the trial had similarly promising results.

    At one point during the trial, Rendulic picked up a soup can and released it on a marked spot on a board. The lab around her erupted in cheers, and she pumped her other arm in the air in triumph.

    “It’s just awesome,” she said.

    The researchers got another pleasant surprise, too: “We found that after a few weeks of use, some of these improvements endure when the stimulation is switched off, indicating exciting avenues for the future of stroke therapies,” said study co-author Dr. Marco Capogrosso, an assistant professor of neurological surgery at Pitt.

    This means even after the device is removed, with some intense physical training, subjects may have long-term improvements, the researchers said.

    No treatments are considered effective for treating paralysis six months or more after a stroke, in what doctors call the chronic stage.

    The stimulation technology needs to be tested further, but it has great potential, the researchers said.

    And it may fill a growing need. Doctors predict that 1 in every 4 people over the age of 25 will have a stroke in their lifetime, and many will develop some kind of paralysis, according to the World Stroke Organization.

    “Creating effective neurorehabilitation solutions for people affected by movement impairment after stroke is becoming ever more urgent,” said study co-author Dr. Elvira Pirondini, an assistant professor of physical medicine and rehabilitation at Pitt.

    “Even mild deficits resulting from a stroke can isolate people from social and professional lives and become very debilitating, with motor impairments in the arm and hand being especially taxing and impeding simple daily activities, such as writing, eating and getting dressed.”

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  • FDA vaccine advisers vote to harmonize Covid-19 vaccines in the United States | CNN

    FDA vaccine advisers vote to harmonize Covid-19 vaccines in the United States | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    A panel of independent experts that advises the US Food and Drug Administration on its vaccine decisions voted unanimously Thursday to update all Covid-19 vaccines so they contain the same ingredients as the two-strain shots that are now used as booster doses.

    The vote means young children and others who haven’t been vaccinated may soon be eligible to receive two-strain vaccines that more closely match the circulating viruses as their primary series.

    The FDA must sign off on the committee’s recommendation, which it is likely to do, before it goes into effect.

    Currently, the US offers two types of Covid-19 vaccines. The first shots people get – also called the primary series – contain a single set of instructions that teach the immune system to fight off the original version of the virus, which emerged in 2019.

    This index strain is no longer circulating. It was overrun months ago by an ever-evolving parade of new variants.

    Last year, in consultation with its advisers, the FDA decided that it was time to update the vaccines. These two-strain, or bivalent, shots contain two sets of instructions; one set reminds the immune system about the original version of the coronavirus, and the second set teaches the immune system to recognize and fight off Omicron’s BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants, which emerged in the US last year.

    People who have had their primary series – nearly 70% of all Americans – were advised to get the new two-strain booster late last year in an effort to upgrade their protection against the latest variants.

    The advisory committee heard testimony and data suggesting that the complexity of having two types of Covid-19 vaccines and schedules for different age groups may be one of the reasons for low vaccine uptake in the US.

    Currently, only about two-thirds of Americans have had the full primary series of shots. Only 15% of the population has gotten an updated bivalent booster.

    Data presented to the committee shows that Covid-19 hospitalizations have been rising for children under the age of 2 over the past year, as Omicron and its many subvariants have circulated. Only 5% of this age group, which is eligible for Covid-19 vaccination at 6 months of age, has been fully vaccinated. Ninety percent of children under the age of 4 are still unvaccinated.

    “The most concerning data point that I saw this whole day was that extremely low vaccination coverage in 6 months to 2 years of age and also 2 years to 4 years of age,” said Dr. Amanda Cohn, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Division of Birth Defects and Infant Disorders. “We have to do much, much better.”

    Cohn says that having a single vaccine against Covid-19 in the US for both primary and booster doses would go a long way toward making the process less complicated and would help get more children vaccinated.

    Others feel that convenience is important but also stressed that data supported the switch.

    “This isn’t only a convenience thing, to increase the number of people who are vaccinated, which I agree with my colleagues is extremely important for all the evidence that was related, but I also think moving towards the strains that are circulating is very important, so I would also say the science supports this move,” said Dr. Hayley Gans, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Stanford University.

    Many others on the committee were similarly satisfied after seeing new data on the vaccine effectiveness of the bivalent boosters, which are cutting the risk of getting sick, being hospitalized or dying from a Covid-19 infection.

    “I’m totally convinced that the bivalent vaccine is beneficial as a primary series and as a booster series. Furthermore, the updated vaccine safety data are really encouraging so far,” said Dr. David Kim, director of the the US Department of Health and Human Services’ National Vaccine Program, in public discussion after the vote.

    Thursday’s vote is part of a larger plan by the FDA to simplify and improve the way Covid-19 vaccines are given in the US.

    The agency has proposed a plan to convene its vaccine advisers – called the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, or VRBPAC – each year in May or June to assess whether the instructions in the Covid-19 vaccines should be changed to more closely match circulating strains of the virus.

    The time frame was chosen to give manufacturers about three months to redesign their shots and get new doses to pharmacies in time for fall.

    “The object, of course – before anyone says anything – is not to chase variants. None of us think that’s realistic,” said Jerry Weir, director of the Division of Viral Products in the FDA’s Office of Vaccines Research and Review.

    “But I think our experience so far, with the bivalent vaccines that we have, does indicate that we can continue to make improvements to the vaccine, and that would be the goal of these meetings,” Weir said.

    In discussions after the vote, committee members were supportive of this plan but pointed out many of the things we still don’t understand about Covid-19 and vaccination that are likely to complicate the task of updating the vaccines.

    For example, we now seem to have Covid-19 surges in the summer as well as the winter, noted Dr. Michael Nelson, an allergist and immunologist at the University of Virginia. Are the surges related? And if so, is fall the best time to being a vaccination campaign?

    The CDC’s Dr. Jefferson Jones said that with only three years of experience with the virus, it’s really too early to understand its seasonality.

    Other important questions related to the durability of the mRNA vaccines and whether other platforms might offer longer protection.

    “We can’t keep doing what we’re doing,” said Dr. Bruce Gellin, chief of global public health strategy at the Rockefeller Foundation. “It’s been articulated in every one of these meetings despite how good these vaccines are. We need better vaccines.”

    The committee also encouraged both government and industry scientists to provide a fuller picture of how vaccination and infection affect immunity.

    One of the main ways researchers measure the effectiveness of the vaccines is by looking at how much they increase front-line defenders called neutralizing antibodies.

    Neutralizing antibodies are like firefighters that rush to the scene of an infection to contain it and put it out. They’re great in a crisis, but they tend to diminish in numbers over time if they’re not needed. Other components of the immune system like B-cells and T-cells hang on to the memory of a virus and stand ready to respond if the body encounters it again.

    Scientists don’t understand much about how well Covid-19 vaccination boosts these responses and how long that protection lasts.

    Another puzzle will be how to pick the strains that are in the vaccines.

    The process of selecting strains for influenza vaccines is a global effort that relies on surveillance data from other countries. This works because influenza strains tend to become dominant and sweep around the world. But Covid-19 strains haven’t worked in quite the same way. Some that have driven large waves in other countries have barely made it into the US variant mix.

    “Going forward, it is still challenging. Variants don’t sweep across the world quite as uniform, like they seem to with influenza,” the FDA’s Weir said. “But our primary responsibility is what’s best for the US market, and that’s where our focus will be.”

    Eventually, the FDA hopes that Americans would be able to get an updated Covid-19 shot once a year, the same way they do for the flu. People who are unlikely to have an adequate response to a single dose of the vaccine – such as the elderly or those with a weakened immune system – may need more doses, as would people who are getting Covid-19 vaccines for the first time.

    At Thursday’s meeting, the advisory committee also heard more about a safety signal flagged by a government surveillance system called the Vaccine Safety Datalink.

    The CDC and the FDA reported January 13 that this system, which relies on health records from a network of large hospital systems in the US, had detected a potential safety issue with Pfizer’s bivalent boosters.

    In this database, people 65 and older who got a Pfizer bivalent booster were slightly more likely to have a stroke caused by a blood clot within three weeks of their vaccination than people who had gotten a bivalent booster but were 22 to 42 days after their shot.

    After a thorough review of other vaccine safety data in the US and in other countries that use Pfizer bivalent boosters, the agencies concluded that the stroke risk was probably a statistical fluke and said no changes to vaccination schedules were recommended.

    At Thursday’s meeting, Dr. Nicola Klein, a senior research scientist with Kaiser Permanente of Northern California, explained how they found the signal.

    The researchers compared people who’d gotten a vaccine within the past three weeks against people who were 22 to 42 days away from their shots because this helps eliminate bias in the data.

    When they looked to see how many people had strokes around the time of their vaccination, they found an imbalance in the data.

    Of 550,000 people over 65 who’d received a Pfizer bivalent booster, 130 had a stroke caused by a blood clot within three weeks of vaccination, compared with 92 people in the group farther out from their shots.

    The researchers spotted the signal the week of November 27, and it continued for about seven weeks. The signal has diminished over time, falling from an almost two-fold risk in November to a 47% risk in early January, Klein said. In the past few days, it hasn’t been showing up at all.

    Klein said they didn’t see the signal in any of the other age groups or with the group that got Moderna boosters. They also didn’t see a difference when they compared Pfizer-boosted seniors with those who were eligible for a bivalent booster but hadn’t gotten one.

    Further analyses have suggested that the signal might be happening not because people who are within three weeks of a Pfizer booster are having more strokes, but because people who are within 22 to 42 days of their Pfizer boosters are actually having fewer strokes.

    Overall, Klein said, they were seeing fewer strokes than expected in this population over that period of time, suggesting a statistical fluke.

    Another interesting thing that popped out of this data, however, was a possible association between strokes and high-dose flu vaccination. Seniors who got both shots on the same day and were within three weeks of those shots had twice the rate of stroke compared with those who were 22 to 42 days away from their shots.

    What’s more, Klein said, the researchers didn’t see the same association between stroke and time since vaccination in people who didn’t get their flu vaccine on the same day.

    The total number of strokes in the population of people who got flu shots and Covid-19 boosters on the same day is small, however, which makes the association a shaky one.

    “I don’t think that the evidence are sufficient to conclude that there’s an association there,” said Dr. Tom Shimabukuro, director of the CDC’s Immunization Safety Office.

    Nonetheless, Richard Forshee, deputy director of the FDA’s Office of Biostatistics and Pharmacovigilance, said the FDA is planning to look at these safety questions further using data collected by Medicare.

    The FDA confirmed that the agency is taking a closer look.

    “The purpose of the study is 1) to evaluate the preliminary ischemic stroke signal reported by CDC using an independent data set and more robust epidemiological methods; and 2) to evaluate whether there is an elevated risk of ischemic stroke with the COVID-19 bivalent vaccine if it is given on the same day as a high-dose or adjuvanted seasonal influenza vaccine,” a spokesperson said in a statement.

    The FDA did not give a time frame for when these studies might have results.

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  • Attorneys for Keenan Anderson’s estate file $50 million claim of damages against city of Los Angeles | CNN

    Attorneys for Keenan Anderson’s estate file $50 million claim of damages against city of Los Angeles | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Attorneys representing the estate of Keenan Anderson, who died from cardiac arrest after he was repeatedly tased by Los Angeles Police Department officers, filed a $50 million claim of damages against the city of Los Angeles for his death, they announced in a news conference Friday. 

    The claim is the first step needed to file a lawsuit against the city, attorney Carl Douglas said.

    The claim requests $35 million due to damages against Anderson’s son and $15 million for Anderson’s estate, saying the city “failed to properly train the involved officers” who ultimately used “unreasonable deadly force.” 

    Anderson, who is the cousin of Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors, was tased repeatedly as officers struggled to arrest him at the scene of a traffic collision on January 3, edited body-worn camera footage released by police shows.

    The English teacher from Washington, DC was in Los Angeles visiting family.

    The Los Angeles city attorney’s office told CNN it has no comment on the lawsuit, and the Los Angeles Police Department said it does not comment on pending litigation. CNN also has reached out to the Los Angeles mayor’s office.  

    The city has 45 days to either accept or deny the claim, Douglas said, and if it denies the claim the estate’s legal team will move forward with a state lawsuit. The lawsuit would claim wrongful death and negligence, among other claims, the filing says.

    The edited video from body-worn cameras shows Anderson at first talking with one officer, and when the video resumes, he jogs into the street as the officer pursues him and orders him to lay down on his stomach.

    Anderson does not appear to comply immediately, and two other officers arrive and move him to lie prone on his stomach on the street, telling Anderson to “relax.” As officers struggle on top of him, Anderson can be heard screaming, “Help, they’re trying to kill me” and “Please, don’t do this.”

    Then, an officer deploys a taser multiple times on Anderson, who says, “I’m not resisting.”

    Later in the video, the Los Angeles Fire Department places Anderson, who appears conscious, onto a gurney near an ambulance. Police said in a news release that Anderson was given medical care at the scene before being transported to a local hospital.

    “While at the hospital, Anderson went into cardiac arrest and was pronounced deceased,” the release says. 

    A preliminary toxicology-blood screen of Anderson’s blood samples tested positive for cocaine and marijuana, police said, adding the Los Angeles County coroner’s office was expected to conduct its own independent toxicology tests.

    “Having to hear Keenan cry out for help the way he did and to watch him be hurt by the very people who are supposed to protect him is something I will never get over,” Gabrielle Hansell, the administrator of Anderson’s estate and the mother of Anderson’s 5-year-old son, said at the news conference announcing the legal action on Friday.

    Since Anderson was “an African American man,” the claimants in this case “believe that because of implicit bias, each of the unknown involved police officers assumed Mr. Anderson presented a serious threat to someone’s safety, and then assaulted, battered and tased him at least six times in response,” the claim says. 

    “Mr. Anderson had not posed any objectively reasonable threat to anyone, but was grabbed, compressed against the hardened surface, and repeatedly tased on account of his African American race,” the claim adds.  

    “We will make sure that Keenan Anderson’s name will not go away in vain,” Douglas said during the news conference.  

    The legal team is also planning to request that the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division investigate the case, attorney Benjamin Crump said.

    Anderson’s death is the third officer-involved death in Los Angeles this year.

    Detectives from the police department’s Force Investigation Division responded to the scene where Anderson was taken into custody and are investigating the use of force, police said.

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  • Lisa Marie Presley’s memorial to be held at Graceland | CNN

    Lisa Marie Presley’s memorial to be held at Graceland | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    A public memorial has been planned at Graceland for Lisa Marie Presley.

    The singer and songwriter died last week after being hospitalized following an apparent cardiac arrest.

    She was 54.

    According to a statement on Graceland’s website, the memorial is open to the general public and will be held at 9 a.m. on January 22 on the front lawn of Graceland Mansion in Memphis, Tennessee.

    “In lieu of flowers, the family encourages all who wish to send something to do so in the form of a donation to The Elvis Presley Charitable Foundation,” a notice on the site reads.

    The Elvis Presley Charitable Foundation supports arts, education and efforts on behalf of children in the Memphis area.

    Elvis Presley purchased the estate in 1957 when he was just 22 years old.

    He died in the mansion from cardiac arrest in 1977 and is buried on the grounds of Graceland, which is now a museum and a popular tourist attraction. Lisa Marie Presley will be buried there as well, alongside her son Benjamin Keough, who died by suicide in 2020 at the age of 27.

    The Graceland estate was held in trust for Lisa Marie Presley, the only child of Elvis and Priscilla Presley, until her 25th birthday.

    “Lisa Marie Presley became more closely involved with the management team of The Elvis Presley Trust and its business entity, Elvis Presley Enterprises, Inc.(EPE), of which she was owner and Chairman of the Board until February 2005 when she sold a major interest in the company,” according to the Graceland website.

    Over the weekend, grief expert David Kessler shared a photo of himself and Presley on his verified Instagram account, writing that she had asked him to accompany her to Memphis for an 88th birthday celebration for her late father days before her death.

    “She had countless invites for the weekend, but for her, there were only three important ones: being at her father’s birthday celebration, spending time at her son and father’s grave after the tours left Graceland, and meeting with a recently bereaved mother,” Kessler wrote.

    Presley was active in helping others deal with their grief, he wrote, including co-hosting grief groups with him at her home for other bereaved parents.

    Kessler wrote that their time visiting Graceland was “so much fun and she was optimistic” and that “Graceland was her happy place and the employees who all knew her shared that she was looking so much better.”

    “She looked more at peace and was so proud of the Elvis movie. Saturday night we sat at the graves of her father and son,” he wrote. “We talked about the heartbreak she grew up with and the more recent devastation of her son’s death. She showed me where she would be buried someday. I said a long time from now …and she said yes, I have so much to do.”

    Presley is survived by her three daughters, actress Riley Keough and twins Finley and Harper Lockwood. A rep for Graceland confirmed to People that they will inherit the estate.

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  • Damar Hamlin discharged after spending more than a week hospitalized due to a cardiac arrest | CNN

    Damar Hamlin discharged after spending more than a week hospitalized due to a cardiac arrest | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Buffalo Bills player Damar Hamlin has been discharged from a Buffalo medical center, his club said Wednesday, after more than a week of hospitalization due to a cardiac arrest he suffered during a “Monday Night Football” game this month.

    The 24-year-old Bills safety had been showing signs of accelerated improvement in the days leading up to his release from Buffalo General Medical Center in New York, hospital officials had said.

    “We have completed a series of tests and evaluations, and in consultation with the team physicians, we are confident that Damar can be safely discharged to continue his rehabilitation at home and with the Bills,” a physician leading Hamlin’s care in Buffalo, Dr. Jamie Nadler, said in a statement the Bills released Wednesday on Twitter.

    Hamlin initially was hospitalized in Cincinnati when his heart suddenly stopped after a tackle during a game against the host Cincinnati Bengals on January 2, but was transferred to the Buffalo facility Monday after doctors determined his critical condition had improved enough for the move.

    Doctors at the Buffalo hospital were trying to determine why Hamlin suffered the cardiac arrest, Kaleida Health, the group of hospitals that includes the Buffalo medical center, said before his discharge. That included whether pre-existing conditions played a role in the event, which shocked many around the country and prompted a huge outpouring of support for the second-year NFL player.

    On Tuesday, Hamlin went through “a comprehensive medical evaluation as well as a series of cardiac, neurological and vascular testing,” the Bills said on Twitter.

    No cause of Hamlin’s cardiac arrest has been publicly announced.

    “Special thank-you to Buffalo General it’s been nothing but love since arrival! Keep me in y’all prayers please!” Hamlin tweeted Tuesday.

    It will be up to Hamlin to decide when he will be around the team again while recovering, Bills coach Sean McDermott said Wednesday.

    “Grateful first and foremost that he is home with his parents and his brother, which is great,” McDermott told reporters Wednesday, as the Bills prepared to host the Miami Dolphins for a playoff game Sunday. No timetable for Hamlin’s return to professional football has been announced.

    “We’ll leave (when he’ll be around the team) up to him. His health is first and foremost in our mind as far as his situation goes and when he feels ready, we will welcome him back,” McDermott said.

    While in critical condition in Cincinnati, Hamlin was sedated and on a ventilator for days. On Friday morning the breathing tube was removed, and Hamlin began walking with some help by that afternoon, his doctors said Monday.

    The health care team focused on stabilizing Hamlin and upgraded his condition Monday because his organ systems were stable and he no longer needed intensive nursing or respiratory therapy, doctors said.

    “He’s certainly on what we consider a very normal to even accelerated trajectory from the life-threatening event that he underwent,” Dr. Timothy Pritts, chief of surgery at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center, said earlier this week. “He’s making great progress.”

    Normal recovery from a cardiac arrest can be measured in weeks to months, Pritts said Monday. Hamlin had been beating that timeline at each stage and is neurologically intact.

    When Hamlin collapsed seconds after an open-field tackle against a Bengals wide receiver, medical personnel rushed onto the field and administered CPR quickly – which helped save his life.

    Hamlin’s heart had stopped, and medical responders revived it twice before putting him into an ambulance and taking him to the hospital. The immediate actions of medical personnel were vital to “not just saving his life, but his neurological function,” said Pritts.

    The horrifying scene of Hamlin suddenly falling on his back after standing up following the tackle unsettled his teammates, the other players and millions of watching fans.

    The game was initially postponed and later cancelled by the NFL – a decision several former football players said was a sign of a shift in prioritizing players’ mental and physical health.

    Now, the Bills organization is encouraging people to learn the critical, life-saving skill of administering CPR.

    The team has pledged support for resources including CPR certifications, automated external defibrillator units and guidance for developing cardiac emergency response plans within the Buffalo community, according to the statement. “We encourage all our fans to continue showing your support and take the next step by obtaining CPR certification,” the Bills said.

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  • Damar Hamlin is showing continued progress and expects to be released from the hospital in the coming days, source says | CNN

    Damar Hamlin is showing continued progress and expects to be released from the hospital in the coming days, source says | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin has shown continued progress with his recovery after his cardiac arrest and on-field collapse, and expects to be released from the hospital in the coming days, a source told CNN.

    Six days after 24-year-old Hamlin suffered a cardiac arrest and collapsed during a game against the Cincinnati Bengals, the NFL star on Sunday posted a photo of himself on social media that shows him sitting up in his hospital bed and making a heart sign with his hands while wearing a number 3 hat and a “Love for Damar” shirt.

    Hamlin tweeted more than a dozen times reacting to the Bills 35-22 win over the New England Patriots Sunday, and expressed his desire to be out on the field with his teammates.

    “It’s GameDay & There’s Nothing I Want More Than To Be Running Out That Tunnel With My Brothers,” he wrote.

    Hamlin also watched from his hospital bed Sunday as teams across the NFL honored him during the last games of the regular season, with players, coaches and fans expressing their support with T-shirts, signs and jersey patches featuring his name and his number 3.

    At the Bills’ Highmark Stadium in Orchard Park, several of Hamlin’s teammates took the field waving flags with his name and jersey number while many in the audience raised heart-shaped signs to pay tribute to the football player.

    The day before, the Bills tweeted that Hamlin continues to breathe on his own and his neurological function is excellent, but he was still in critical condition, citing his doctors.

    Hamlin collapsed after making a tackle during the first quarter of the Bills’ game against the Cincinnati Bengals last Monday night. He was rushed from the field in an ambulance, leaving players crying and embracing, and unleashing an outpouring of support from fans and others across the country.

    The game was initially postponed, then later canceled by the NFL.

    Fans sign a poster with messages of support for Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin outside Highmark Stadium Sunday.

    Before Sunday’s game between the Baltimore Ravens and the Bengals, the medical staff who rushed to Hamlin’s aid were honored at Cincinnati’s Paycor Stadium – the same field where Hamlin suffered the cardiac arrest.

    At New York’s Highmark Stadium, Buffalo Bills wide receiver John Brown gave a game ball to assistant athletic trainer Denny Kellington, the man credited with saving Hamlin’s life by administering critical CPR to the football player – who doctors say lost his pulse on the field had to be immediately revived through resuscitation and defibrillation.

    The immediate response of Kellington and other medical personnel was vital to “not just saving his life, but his neurological function,” Dr. Timothy Pritts, one of Hamlin’s doctors at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center, has said.

    Hamlin was sedated after being taken to the hospital. Doctors announced Thursday that he had started to awaken and he appears neurologically intact, while still critically ill and on a ventilator.

    “Did we win?” was Hamlin’s first question upon awakening, according to Pritts, who said he scribbled the question on a clipboard.

    On Friday, the Bills said Hamlin’s breathing tube was removed overnight and he had spoken to his teammates via video.

    Following the victory over the Patriots on Sunday, Bills cornerback Tre’Davious White said Hamlin texted members of the team prior to Sunday’s game, saying, “I’m thinking about y’all, I’m sorry that I did that to y’all.”

    “For him to check on us when he is the person that’s going through what he’s going through – that just shows what type of person he is.”

    White said incident Monday’s incident still haunts the six-year NFL veteran.

    “To see everything transpire, from the hit, to him getting up, to him falling, to everything – it’s just something that I can’t … unsee. Every time I close my eyes it replays. I tried watching tv and every time the tv goes to commercial, that’s the only thing that comes to my mind,” White said.

    During Sunday’s Bills game, the public address announcer read a statement of support for Hamlin and received a roar from the crowd, which included fans in a sea of blue and red who held up signs of support for Hamlin saying “BILLI3VE,” “All the heart for #3,” “Love for Damar,” “Did we win” and “Thank You Medical Staff!”

    Several of Hamlin’s teammates, including Josh Allen and Kaiir Elam, took the field waving flags with Hamlin’s name and jersey No. 3.

    Then the game began with a bang.

    Bills returner Nyhiem Hines took the opening kickoff for a 96-yard touchdown, sending the crowd into euphoria and prompted Hamlin to tweet, “OMFG!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

    Hines said the team needed this win after the events of the past week.

    “As a community, I feel like we needed this win. I feel like my brothers in that locker room, we needed some great energy and some great vibes. And we had to win this,” Hines said.

    Other teams around the league also paid tribute to Hamlin Sunday.

    In Cincinnati, Bengals wide receiver Tee Higgins, who was involved in the play where Hamlin was injured, wore a “Love for Damar” t-shirt during pregame warmups.

    Prior to the start of the game, the stadium’s announcer read a statement that asked fans for a moment of support for Hamlin, his family and the first responders.

    The fans in Cincinnati, many with signs supporting Hamlin, cheered loudly. The television broadcast also showed Bengals coach Zac Taylor wearing a “Love for Damar” hoodie during the tribute.

    Ahead of the Chargers-Broncos game, Broncos Quarterback Russell Wilson and Chargers safety Derwin James met at midfield, both wearing No. 3, and led a moment of support for Hamlin.

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  • Damar Hamlin’s doctors are working to get him breathing without a ventilator after his mid-game cardiac arrest left him in critical condition | CNN

    Damar Hamlin’s doctors are working to get him breathing without a ventilator after his mid-game cardiac arrest left him in critical condition | CNN

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    Cincinnati
    CNN
     — 

    After suffering a cardiac arrest mid-game on Monday, Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin remains sedated on a ventilator as doctors work toward getting him to breathe on his own, his uncle said, while uneasy supporters across the nation await word of his fate.

    The 24-year-old player still was in critical condition Tuesday night, his uncle Dorrian Glenn told CNN, after his collapse on the field the prior night halted the Bills game against the Cincinnati Bengals, stunning a packed stadium that had only moments earlier been rippling with excitement over the catch and run ahead of Hamlin’s tackle of a Bengals wide receiver.

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    In just seconds, medical personnel were rushing onto the field to administer CPR and resuscitate Hamlin in front of his teammates, many of whom fell to their knees, sent up a prayer or were openly weeping and embracing one another.

    Hamlin would be resuscitated twice that night – once on the field and again when he was hurried into the University of Cincinnati Medical Center, where he was still being treated Tuesday night, his uncle said.

    “I’m not a crier, but I’ve never cried so hard in my life. Just to know, like, my nephew basically died on the field and they brought him back to life,” Glenn said.

    Hamlin is on a ventilator to relieve some of the strain on his lungs, which have been damaged, according to Glenn. The doctors told Glenn his nephew has also been “flipped over on his stomach” in the hospital to help with the blood on his lungs, he said, adding, “It seems like he’s trending upwards in a positive way.”

    The game was suspended with nearly six minutes left in the first quarter and was later officially postponed. It will not be resumed this week, and no decision has been made on whether to continue it at a later date, the NFL said Tuesday.

    On-field injuries are not uncommon in the league, which often resumes play even after severe cases. But several current and former players have said Hamlin’s cardiac arrest felt especially disturbing as medical personnel fought to save his life while fans and players looked on.

    Bills offensive tackle Dion Dawkins realized the gravity of his teammate’s condition when Hamlin stayed on the ground as more and more medical staff were called over, he said.

    “In that moment, you’re just thinking like, ‘What can I do? What can we do?’ And it just immediately breaks you down into prayer,” Dawkins told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Tuesday. “Whether you’re a believer or not, only a higher power can really take control of what is next. And our people that help also assisted that higher power.”

    Hamlin’s collapse marks the latest in a series of tragic blows for the players and Buffalo community, which in the past few months has endured a racist mass shooting and a historic blizzard that left at least 41 people dead in Erie County, New York. “It has been, you know, just (a) constant beating for Buffalo,” Dawkins said.

    A swell of support has surrounded Hamlin and his family as messages of prayers and well wishes have flooded in from star athletes, fans and national leaders. A fundraiser that Hamlin previously had started for his Chasing M’s Foundation toy drive has raised more than $6 million since his hospitalization.

    At a prayer service for the player Tuesday night, community members described the heartbreak of watching “one of our own” endure such a crisis.

    “All you can do right now is pray for Damar. The man, not the football player, not the Buffalo Bill, but the person. He has to pull through,” the city’s poet laureate Jillian Hanesworth said.

    It is still unclear what led to Hamlin’s cardiac arrest – a condition that results from electrical disturbances that cause the heart to suddenly stop beating properly. Death can occur quickly if help isn’t rendered immediately. It is not the same as a heart attack or heart failure.

    When the heart is not beating well, fluid can sometimes back up into the lungs and make it hard for medical staff to oxygenate the patient, CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta explained. So, they will flip the person on their stomach into a prone position to make breathing easier.

    It sounds like Hamlin is still having a significant amount of cardiac dysfunction and his heart cannot pump enough blood, Gupta said.

    One of the treatment options is to decrease the body’s demand for oxygenated blood, he told CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Tuesday.

    “So, you want to improve the amount of circulation, but in the interim, you can also decrease the demand by sedating somebody, by keeping them on a breathing machine,” he said. “Sometimes they’ll even use cooling agents, hypothermia it’s called, to basically almost put the body in more of a hibernation-like state so it’s not demanding as much oxygenated blood. That’s part of the reason he would be on a breathing machine as well.”

    Hamlin’s family on Tuesday thanked the UC Medical Center staff “who have provided exceptional care to Damar.”

    “On behalf of our family, we want to express our sincere gratitude for the love and support shown to Damar during this challenging time. We are deeply moved by the prayers, kind words, and donations from fans around the country,” its statement said.

    Damar Hamlin, 24, has been with the Buffalo Bills for two years and played every game this season.

    Several star athletes – including tennis player Coco Gauff, the NFL’s JJ Watt and NBA legend LeBron James – have applauded the NFL’s decision to postpone the game and have emphasized the importance of Hamlin’s safe recovery over the game’s outcome

    Former NFL player Donté Stallworth said the league’s decision to postpone the game wouldn’t have happened years ago. “Five, 10 years ago, the game probably would have resumed,” he told CNN’s Jim Sciutto on Tuesday.

    “I don’t know if you can make the game any much safer,” he said. “This is a brutal sport. I think people forget that. They look at players more as commodities sometimes, especially with fantasy football.

    “Sometimes we forget the human side, that these players are actually human beings and they have families and they have wives and kids,” he added, pointing out that Hamlin’s “mother was there witnessing this with her own eyes.”

    Dawkins was relieved and grateful that his team did not have to continue playing, he said.

    “The fact that we did not have to go back out there on that field and play just shows that there is care, and that’s all we can ever ask for is that we get treated as people,” he said. “Because most people just treat us as athletes, as superstars, and some people like celebrities, but in that moment they treated us like people.”

    Bills players and staff are still processing Monday night’s events, a source within the team told CNN’s Coy Wire on Tuesday.

    The continued shock of Hamlin’s hospitalization – on top of the city’s mass shooting in May, deadly December blizzard, having a home game in November moved to Detroit and getting stuck in Chicago during the holidays – has been heavy on everyone associated with the club, the source said.

    “Everyone is exhausted,” the source told Wire, adding that the team’s flight back to New York didn’t land until 3:30 a.m. ET on Tuesday.

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  • What is an aortic aneurysm? | CNN

    What is an aortic aneurysm? | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Sports reporter Grant Wahl died of a rupture of an ascending aortic aneurysm with hemopericardium – an accumulation of blood in the sac around his heart – his wife, Dr. Céline Gounder announced on Wednesday. The aneurysm was slowly growing and had gone undetected, she wrote in a statement on Substack.

    “The chest pressure he experienced shortly before his death may have represented the initial symptoms. No amount of CPR or shocks would have saved him. His death was unrelated to COVID. His death was unrelated to vaccination status. There was nothing nefarious about his death,” Gounder wrote.

    An aneurysm occurs when a weak spot in a blood vessel bulges or balloons out. In Wahl’s case, the bulge was in the aorta, the largest artery carrying blood away from the heart. An ascending aortic aneurysm happens when the bulge is located in the section of the aorta that is close to the heart, right where it begins to climb out of the lower left pumping chamber.

    If left untreated, aneurysms can cause the wall of a blood vessel to split or burst, leading to death.

    It’s very rare to survive an event like the one that happened to Wahl, said CNN Medical Correspondent Dr. Tara Narula, who is a practicing cardiologist.

    Narula said the blood in the sac around the heart is an indication that the artery wall had ruptured.

    “Normally there’s no blood in that space. And what can happen is if there’s enough blood that gets in there, the heart essentially can’t beat because it sort of compresses the heart, and you can have a cardiac arrest,” she said, adding that she couldn’t comment specifically on what with Wahl, because she didn’t have any personal knowledge of his case.

    Aortic aneurysms were the cause of death for about 10,000 people in 2019, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

    Aneurysms in the chest become more common as people age. They are slightly more common among men than women, according to the American Heart Association. They are usually caused by high blood pressure or sudden injury, or a history of high cholesterol or smoking.

    Certain inherited conditions such as Marfan syndrome or Ehlers-Danlos syndrome can make it more likely for a person to experience one.

    Symptoms of an aortic aneurysm include:

    • Sudden sharp pain the back or chest
    • Trouble breathing or swallowing

    Not everyone will experience symptoms, even with a large aneurysm. Actor John Ritter died suddenly in 2003 from an aortic aneurysm while he was rehearsing on set.

    If an aneurysm is caught in time, it may be able to be treated with medication or surgery.

    Aortic aneurysms have become more common over the last decade, increasing about 75%, according to the American Heart Association. Still these events are rare, occurring in about two out of every 100,000 people.

    Because of their association with tobacco use, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommends that all men who have ever smoked have an ultrasound screening between the ages of 65 and 75, for abdominal aortic aneurysms, even if they don’t have symptoms. Abdominal aortic aneurysms are bulges of that artery that could rupture in the abdomen.

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