Oregon Personal Injury Lawyer Blog

The results of a study published this month in the American Journal of Surgery will certainly strike some of us as counterintuitive. The researchers looked at the effect of sleep deprivation on surgical residents and found that sleepiness does not affect performance of a previously learned task. For patients at Portland hospitals, the broad implication is that the surgeon with just two hours of sleep is no more likely to make a mistake than the well-rested surgeon.

The study did not involve surgery on patients. Rather, the medical students used a simulator. On the first day, they practiced for about 45 minutes on all three levels of a particular task. They all got a good night's sleep and came back on the second day. They performed the same tasks to get a baseline score. The researchers tossed in another task during the test to determine how well the subjects dealt with unexpected events.

The heartbreaking effects of Alzheimer's disease have been well-documented. For families in Oregon that are concerned about the health of older loved ones, the mere suspicion that something is wrong is stressful; a doctor's news that the brain scan confirmed the diagnosis can be devastating. It was with interest, then, that we noted an opinion piece about a new study. The researchers found that about two-thirds of brain scans resulted in a misdiagnosis of Alzheimer's disease.

The study was conducted using individuals with a mean age of 64 who lived in a care community. Prior studies concerning the accuracy of using positron emission tomography, or PET, scans to diagnose Alzheimer's disease have used participants who were more particularly selected, possibly skewing the results by using an unrepresentative group.

We are finishing up our discussion of a study that was recently published in the journal Pediatrics. Researchers surveyed 5,400 Oregon eighth-graders about their experiences with the choking game. Players either strangle themselves or have someone else strangle them to cut off the flow of blood and oxygen to the brain. The result is a rush -- when the blood and oxygen return to the brain -- that comes with a real risk of brain damage or death.

According a mother whose son died when he tried to play the game at home, kids don't understand that every time they do this they kill off brain cells. They don't understand, she says, that the game is always risky, even if the player doesn't suffer any immediate adverse effects.

Hang gliding, drag racing, sky diving, bungee jumping, volcano boarding -- people of all ages engage in extreme sports like these. The fun is in the danger, and, for some, the more danger the better. A group of Oregon researchers recently published a study about a dangerous activity that pre-teens and teens have been indulging in for decades: It is the choking game

The game goes by other names -- fainting, pass out and knock out, among others -- and it is inherently dangerous. Very dangerous, in fact: The objective is to induce cerebral hypoxia or, in layman's terms, to cut off the oxygen flow to the brain. When the blood and oxygen rush back in, the player can experience a euphoric high.

In a study published in the journal Pediatrics this month, researchers confirm what the mother of a 12-year-old already knew: Kids, for the most part in junior high, are still playing the choking game, and the choking game can be fatal. The researchers, based in Oregon, wanted to report on a common but little-known way for kids to get a legal high. Along with bath salts and synthetic marijuana, this legal high can result in brain damage, head trauma and death.

The choking game has been around for decades, but it may be one of those fads that skips generations. The 12-year-old's mother hadn't heard about it, but her own 85-year-old mother had: She remembered playing it when she was a kid. She was lucky. The day after her grandson learned the game from a schoolmate, he tried it at home. His mother says she "missed him by about 10 minutes."

Soldiers returning from active duty overseas have more than a few hurdles to jump as they settle back into life outside of a combat zone. According to a recent study, it can take months for service members coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan to adjust to driving stateside. The study showed that military personnel are responsible for 13 percent more accidents after they get home than they were before they left.

What makes the results so interesting is that the accidents are not caused by the carelessness of the drivers. The explanation is both more obvious and more subtle: The roads of Portland are different from the roads in war zones. It's not carelessness that causes the crashes. It's caution.

With proms and graduation parties around the corner, Oregon's emergency rooms and poison centers are hoping the state will buck a national trend. More and more teens are celebrating their big days with recreational synthetic drugs, products that mimic the effects of dangerous controlled substances like Ecstasy and cocaine. National health statistics show that more than a few families have lost a loved one who used the bath salts or fake marijuana "just that one time."

The active chemicals are legal in Oregon and a handful of other states. About two-thirds of state legislatures have banned them, but the West Coast has not. Last fall, the Drug Enforcement Agency issued a nationwide ban on the most common chemicals found in these products. (The bans will expire in September and October.) In Congress, a bill that passed the House is now stuck in the Senate; consumer safety advocates aren't even cautiously optimistic that the president will see the bill before the session ends.

Portland police are still on the lookout for an alleged hit-and-run driver who struck and killed a 63-year-old Southwest Portland woman on March 31. Now, there may have been a small break in the case.

On Thursday, police announced that after a forensic analysis of the accident site, they believe the car that struck the woman was probably a Honda or Acura sedan made between 1996 and 2008. It would probably have a damaged hood and a broken windshield.