Clinician-scientists from NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center are suggesting an immediate and important change to guidelines used in the care of patients with traumatic brain injury (TBI). The researchers say that following TBI, patients should be given nutritional supplementation through a gastric feeding tube as soon as possible, which they say can improve their chances of survival by as much as four-fold.

NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital is the only New York hospital to rank in all seven clinical areas reported in the 2008 U.S.News & World Report "America's Best Children's Hospitals" issue. The Hospital also ranks among the top 10 nationally in three categories: Neonatal Care (#4), Heart & Heart Surgery (#6) and Digestive Disorders (#8).

On Valentine's Day, one of the nation's first three-way living-donor kidney transplant chains was initiated. The innovative approach -- a never-ending altruistic donor chain -- may dramatically improve the opportunity for patients in need of kidney transplants to find a compatible donor and potentially revolutionize the organ transplant process in the United States. This life-saving chain began with the generosity of a California woman who donated her kidney to a stranger in New York City, resulting in life-saving kidney transplantations for three patients -- and, going forward, potentially benefiting hundreds of the 74,000 kidney patients on the national transplantation waiting list.

NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital ranks first in the New York City metropolitan area and sixth in the nation, according to U.S. News Media Group's 2008 edition of America's Best Hospitals.

In April of last year, surgeons at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center made headlines by removing a women's gallbladder through her uterus using a flexible endoscope, aided by several external incisions for added visibility. Now, they have performed the same procedure without a single external incision in what surgeons report may be the first surgery of its kind in the United States.

Time: 6:30 PM. Place: 1300 York Avenue at 69th Street, Uris Auditorium. Free and open to the public.

Dr. Herbert Pardes, president and CEO of NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, was honored by the New York Academy of Sciences (NYAS) for his leadership in making New York City a center of scientific excellence.

Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital of NewYork-Presbyterian is one of only a few hospitals in the country to offer spinal stapling, a new treatment alternative for young people with scoliosis, an abnormal curvature of the spine that is painful and can restrict breathing. The Center for Early Onset Scoliosis, led by Dr Michael Vitale, sees about 400 patients per year under the age of 5 with the condition. Spinal stapling is one of a number of new techniques that promise improved outcomes.