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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.

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.