Surgery: Filtering Out the Flukes

Surgery is not strictly a matter of cutting into patients and cutting something out. The A.M.A. last week heard about a new operation designed not to cut out but to filter out the tiny parasites that cause schistosomiasis, a disease that is rapidly displacing malaria as mankind's greatest scourge in tropical regions.

Schistosomiasis, or snail fever, afflicts about 200 million people, chiefly in Latin America, Africa and Asia. Caused by parasitic blood flukes, it is found around marshy deltas, sewage-contaminated lakes and irrigation ditches, where the larvae of the worms lodge in snails and flourish. Invading the human body through...

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