Digest -- U.Va. news daily

Photo courtesy of HealthTalk

Dr. Jeffrey Elias adjusts the Medtronic electrical brain stimulation system, which has helped Parkinson’s patient Carlton Rowland. With the implanted device, Rowland’s ability to walk has improved notably.

Parkinson’s patients find promise in new treatment
Call it a pacemaker for your brain. Doctors at the U.Va. Health System are seeing good results in Parkinson’s patients from “deep brain stimulation,” in which a stimulator is implanted in the brain and attached to a small generator implanted near the collarbone. The procedure can double or triple the amount of functional time in a Parkinson’s patient’s day, said U.Va. neurosurgeon Jeffrey Elias.
(Top News Daily,
June 11)

Medical Center has state’s only PET-CT scanner
The University Health System has a powerful new scanning tool that can detect cancer in its early stages, diagnose brain disorders like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases, and monitor heart disease. The hospital unveiled its $2 million PET-CT scanner — the first in Virginia — June 17. Named the 2000 Medical Science Invention of the Year by Time magazine, the scanner combines positron emission tomography with computed tomography to produce clear and precise images of internal organs down to the cellular level.
(Top News Daily, June 17)

Grant will make ‘smart’ traffic data smarter
Like the weather, everyone wants to know what the traffic will be like tomorrow, or even for the next drive. Brian Smith, director of the Engineering School’s Smart Travel Lab, is hoping to be able to produce those forecasts some day. But in order to predict the future, he needs to be able to analyze what happened in the past. That’s where a $1 million federal grant comes in — it will allow Smith to archive the vast amounts of data generated
by intelligent traffic technologies on many of Virginia’s highways.
(Top News Daily, June 18)

Veteran baseball coach Womack takes asst. athletics director post
After 23 years as U.Va. head baseball coach, Dennis Womack announced June 10 that he was leaving the dugout to become an assistant athletics director.
Womack’s teams won 594 games and the 1996 Atlantic Coast Conference championship, falling just one victory short of the College World Series. Womack also presided over the recently completed refurbishment of Davenport Field.
(Top News Daily, June 12)