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The first successful kidney transplant was performed in 1954 and occurred in Boston. A kidney from an identical twin was transplanted into his dying brother's body and was not rejected because it did not appear foreign to his body.
Medication errors are more common among seriously ill patients than with those with minor conditions.
On average, someone in the United States has a stroke about every 40 seconds. This is about 795,000 people per year.
Cancer has been around as long as humankind, but only in the second half of the twentieth century did the number of cancer cases explode.
As many as 28% of hospitalized patients requiring mechanical ventilators to help them breathe (for more than 48 hours) will develop ventilator-associated pneumonia. Current therapy involves intravenous antibiotics, but new antibiotics that can be inhaled (and more directly treat the infection) are being developed.