Here's another example of the VA breaking ground in medical matters. Your can now watch, even grade, the technique of your surgeon while he preforms a coronary bypass on your own heart. It's a fact.

A team of surgeons from the VA Pittsburgh Healthcare System (VAPHS) and University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) made history this summer by performing the nation's first coronary bypass surgery on a patient as he lay awake, chatting with staff in the operating room.

Instead of using general anesthesia on the patient, Juhan Paiste, M.D., an anesthesiologist in the VAPHS and assistant professor of anesthesiology and critical care medicine at UPMC, injected an epidural through a tiny catheter near the patient's spinal cord to numb his entire chest area. The epidural is a less-risky regional anesthesia routinely given to block labor pains during childbirth. Then Marco Zenati, M.D., a VAPHS cardiac surgeon and director of the Minimally Invasive Cardiac Surgery Program at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, began the two-inch incision required for the operation. The minimally invasive direct coronary bypass technique significantly reduces a patient's hospital recovery time.

In this case, Zenati believes the patient could have gone home the day after the surgery. He was, however, held five days longer for observation and a post-surgery cardiac catheterization. "Our goal is to make bypass surgery an outpatient procedure," said Zenati.

ONLINE APPLICATIONS FOR VA BENEFITS AND HEALTH CARE

Veterans can now apply for VA benefits and health care online. Two new systems will allow veterans quick, easy and secure access to apply for compensation, pension, rehabilitation benefits and health care.

To apply for health care, veterans can fill out and submit an Internet-based 10-10 EZ application available today for the first time nationwide. Initially tested at 30 VA facilities, the 10-10 EZ is automatically e-mailed to the VA health care facility selected by the veteran. VA employees register the data, print the form and mail it back to the veteran for signature. Veterans can also print out the completed form and mail it to a VA health care facility themselves.

"Veterans On Line Applications" (VONAPP) is designed for veterans to apply for compensation, pension, and vocational rehabilitation benefits through the Internet. Completed applications are sent electronically to the veteran's local VA office. Processing begins right away and veterans receive a response letting them know the status of their applications.

"Of course, security is of paramount importance," said Acting Secretary of Veterans Affairs Hershel W. Gober. "These forms are individually encrypted, ensuring the privacy of veterans' personal data. This is part of VA's approach to department-wide security planning and management."

Later this year, VA plans to offer education applications on the Internet. Currently, veterans attending school under the Montgomery GI Bill can make their monthly certification of enrollment at http://www.gibill.va.gov.

"Online applications, bar coding for medications, computerized record systems, telemedicine and in the near future -- Smart Cards -- are all examples of VA developing information technology on par, and often ahead of, the rest of the country," said Gober. "I'm really excited about what technology can do to allow us to do a better job in caring for the nation's veterans."

Access an application on the VA NY/NJ Veterans Healthcare Network (VISN3) web site or on the VA Benefits web site.

"PROJECT "SHAD" - IT'S NOT ABOUT FISH

Some years ago a veteran in Idaho claimed multiple disabilities incurred during his service on the USS Granville Hall, a naval ship involved in "Project Autumn Gold". He received total benefits for his claimed injuries but he was awarded them upon a different basis.

Now, we're informed that this veteran may not have been just "whistling in the wind." It has come to light that a 15 year multi-service effort called "Project Shad" (Shipboard Hazzard and Defense) was initiated in the early 1960's into the 1970's involving at least the Army and Navy, with two intended objectives:

• to determine the effectiveness of shipboard detection and protective procedures against chemical, biological and possibly nuclear threats.
• to determine the potential risk to American forces posed by these agents.