SALT LAKE CITY -- For eight years a toy vampire's tooth was lodged invisibly in a man's lung, an unwelcome souvenir of a long-ago Halloween party, before a pulmonologist's persistence, trying to solve a mysterious cough, brought the object to light.

SALT LAKE CITY -- For selected patients with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, drug therapy may offer limited benefit, investigators reported here.

WASHINGTON -- Coronary bifurcation lesions can be safely stented with Cypher (sirolimus-eluting) stents using either a simple or complex strategy, with no significant difference in clinical endpoints, according to investigators here.

BOSTON -- A couple of drinks-liquor, wine, or beer-added daily to an already heart-healthy lifestyle further reduces the risk of myocardial infarction in otherwise healthy men, researchers here reported.

WASHINGTON -- Use of Visipaque (iodixanol), an iso-osmolar, nonionic contrast agent, did not reduce the rate of nephropathy in angiography patients with renal failure compared with less-expensive agents, researchers reported here.

WASHINGTON -- Infusion of bone marrow-derived progenitor cells directly into a coronary infarct reduced by about half the risk of death, MI, or another revascularization procedure at 12 months, compared with patients getting sham infusions.

LOS ANGELES -- Race and ability to pay appear to be major determinants of whether patients in California hospitals receive complex surgical procedures in high-volume hospitals, researchers here have found.

BOSTON -- For patients with the potentially fatal mucocutaneous blistering disease pemphigus vulgaris, a combination of Rituxan (rituximab) and intravenous immune globulin may succeed where other therapies have failed.

NEW YORK -- Spiral CT screening of smokers, former smokes, and others at risk for lung cancer can detect early curable disease at a cost comparable to that of mammography screening for breast cancer, asserted an international team of investigators.

SALT LAKE CITY -- Hyperbaric oxygen therapy has been given credit for the dramatic recovery of Randal McCloy Jr., who was pulled unconscious from a mine in Sago, W.Va., 10 months ago, suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning.

WASHINGTON -- The drug-eluting coronary stent industry has responded with some additional soothing statistics in efforts to calm fears about the long-term safety of the devices.

WASHINGTON -- The maker of the Cypher (sirolimus-eluting) coronary stent said today that a new independent analysis has given it an even playing field compared with bare-metal devices.

CHICAGO -- Vegetables help older patients keep their wits about them, but fruit appears to have no effect on preventing cognitive decline, according to researchers here.

SALT LAKE CITY -- For patients with emphysema who might be candidates for lung volume reduction surgery, an umbrella-shaped valve could be a safe, effective, and non-invasive alternative, according to researchers here.

KEELE, England -- Two non-traditional interventional approaches produced short-term improvements in knee pain in older patients, according to researchers here, but the effects did not last.

WASHINGTON -- The Cypher sirolimus-eluting stent out-performed Taxus, a paclitaxel-eluting stent, for long lesions in native coronaries, a finding that was immediately hailed.

PHILADELPHIA -- For most women with early breast cancer, following five years of tamoxifen with an aromatase inhibitor will bring only a slight improvement in disease-free survival, according to researchers here.

MENLO PARK, Calif. -- The answer to intractable refractory tennis elbow may be a single injection of endogenous plasma, treated to increase the concentration of platelets, according to researchers here.

HOUSTON -- The poorer breast cancer survival rates for African-American women can be attributed to unfavorable tumor cell biology, not just socioeconomic factors, researchers here reported.

UTRECHT, The Netherlands -- Reserve antibiotics for children younger than two years old with bilateral acute otitis media infections or for any child with otorrhea, researchers here recommended. For other children, watchful waiting seems justified