New entertainment options in the form of a Starlight Nintendo Wii Fun Center videogame system and a free DVD rental kiosk will soon be available to patients at Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital at NewYork-Presbyterian, thanks to a donation from the tri-state area Starlight Children's Foundation's Pediatric Hospital Support Program.

In a New York City metro-area first, a 93-year-old Bronx man underwent implantation of a new stent graft at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, the only center on the Eastern Seaboard with access to this investigational device. The new stent graft was implanted under an FDA-approved clinical trial protocol. The stent graft is designed to treat a complex form of abdominal aortic aneurysms in which the weakened, enlarged vessel wall is too close to the arteries leading to the kidneys. These complex aneurysms cannot be safely treated with currently available aortic stent grafts and would otherwise require major surgery. Without treatment, patients with aortic aneurysms are at risk for sudden death.

Preliminary results of a pivotal Phase 2 clinical trial of pralatrexate (PDX), a drug that partially works by mimicking folic acid, showed a complete or partial response in 27 percent of patients with recurrent or resistant peripheral T-cell lymphoma (PTCL). PROPEL (Pralatrexate in patients with Relapsed Or refractory PEripheral T-cell Lymphoma) findings were presented by the study's principal investigator, Dr. Owen A. O'Connor of the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center at Columbia University Medical Center and NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, at the 50th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Hematology (ASH) in San Francisco.

Women may respond less favorably than men to cardiovascular disease (CV) drug-treatments for enlarged heart, according to NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center physician-scientists.

A leading pioneer of advanced techniques in transplantation surgery, Dr. Sandip Kapur has been appointed chief of the Division of Transplantation Surgery at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center.

There is new evidence linking risk for one kind of fracture with long-term use of bisphosphonates -- drugs like Fosamax that are prescribed to treat osteoporosis in older persons by increasing bone density in order to prevent fractures.

While global migration to large cities has provided socio-economic opportunities to millions, it has also introduced new threats to urban populations, particularly marginalized communities. Large cities are increasingly vulnerable to manmade and natural calamities that can lead to injury, loss of life, and humanitarian crises.

In the last decade, biomedical and research breakthroughs, notably in genetics and stem cells, have helped transform the care of children, improving diagnosis and treatment for numerous diseases. On Nov. 8 and 9, Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital of NewYork-Presbyterian and Columbia University Medical Center will host a conference at the Grand Hyatt New York, titled "Innovations in Pediatric Medicine," to exchange the latest advances in genetics, stem cell therapy, and childhood disease treatment.