The Canadian Jewish News, Friday, May 28, 1993-Page 9
JERUSALEM — Patients who are scheduled for major surgery next month can do much to eUminate postsurgical complications, according to Dr. Ditza Gross of the Hebrew Uriiversity-Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem. Spending just 10 minutes a day prior to the operation strengthening the muscles that breathe, she says, can reduce the rate of severe complications from 27 to 4 percent.
Gross's findings have so impressed her colleagues that the heads of Hadassah's cardiac, orthopedic, vascular and general surgery departments now insist all their candidates — 20 to 30 of them a week — come through her Clinic for Evaluating and Treating Respiratory Problems, within the medical centre's anesthesiology department.
"The core idea of my technique is that the respiratory muscles tire like any Other muscles in the body," says the Israeli doctor. "And. like other mucles, they can be strengthened by training."
Training consists of breathing for 10 minutes a day dirough a plastic T-shaped tube. A one-way valve in the tube's crossbar separates air breathed in from air breathed out. Air expired is forced out through different-strength "resistances" — colored plastic disks with increasingly smaller outlet holes.
"The smaller the hole, the harder it is to exhale," says Gross. "And the harder it is, the stronger and more -duriable become the respiratory muscles."
Gross developed this breathing technique to help partially paralyzed patients improve their quality of life. At the time, she was working on her doctorate in Experimental Medicine at McGill University in Montreal, under the renowned Peter Macklem.
"I staned by trying to diagnose fa-
A patient is given breathing program developed by Dr. Ditza Gross
tigue of the respiratory muscles,'' she says. "Once I found that thes.e muscles did tire, that led to the technique 1 developed for staving off fatigue. We found that improving the breathing of paraplegics and quadriplegics affected the whole body. After four weeks of breathing training, partially paralyzed patients who had been able to sit in wheelchairs for no more than two hours out of 24, were now comfortable in their chairs for entire days."
Gross next turned to ventilator-dependent quadriplegics. "I worked with seven such patients for six months," she says. "At the end of that time all could breathe spontaneously — some for as long as 16 hours a day." ■ ,
Back in Israel in 1984, Gross joined the staff of the Hadassah Medical Center's anesthesiology department in Jerusalem.
"It was shortly after I'd returned to Jerusalem that I came across a study showing that 20 to 70 percent of patients undergoing open-heart surgery and major abdominal surgery developed complications," she says. "I wondered whether my technique could help cut the complication rate."
A hundred coronary bypass candidates took part in a study undertaken by Gross, strengthening their respiratory muscles with her exercises prior to surgery. The results were dramatic; they needed to be respirat-,ed less after surgery, suffered fewer • complications, needed less intensive care, and recovered more completely.
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NEW YORK (JTA) - German Chancellor Helmut Kohl promised Jewish leaders last week that his government will modify a controversial draft law that in its current form would tax Jews 25 percent for the return of propeny seized by the Nazis, mostly in eastern Germany.
In a private meeting May 12 in Bonn with Ignat'z Bu-bis. head.of the German Jewish community, and officials from the World Jewish Congress, Kohl said that the tax requirement would be altered for victims of the Nazis, according to a Jewish official who was present.
The proposed law was aimed at clearing upquestion.s of property ownership and would apply to land seized by both the Nazis and the communist regime of the former East Germany;
Hundreds of millions of dollars of property is believed to be involved.
Jewish officials have objected to the d;aft law, saying that the tax requirement meant that, in^fect, Jews were being asked to pay for stolen goods.
Kohl told the Jewish leaders that the draft law was not the final word and that the Jewish community would be dealt with separately, apart from the general restitution .law. ■
WJG President Edgar Bronftnan, who was among those who met with Kohl, described the talk as "warm, friendly and constructive.
. "The chancellor was clearly sympathetic to those who had suffered under the Nazis," Bronfrnan said.
Kohl said he had secured agreement both within the ruling party as well as from the opposition parties for changing the proposed law as it dealt with Jews.
Kohl read the Jewish delegates a formal statement from his cabinet that "improvements in the regulations concerning Nazi victims will.be discussed.
"The federal govemmeht will try to come to a solution acceptable to all parties." the statement said.
The proposed law already contains a break for Jews, who would have paid a tax of 25 percent of current market value, while non-Jews would pay 33 percent. ,
Kohl also said that Bubis would be consulted before ■final formulation of the law.
There was an agreement at the meeting to institutionalize a German-Jewish dialogue on a continuous and permanent basis, so that conversations do not occur only when crises arise. —
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