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Ask The Expert: Deep Thoughts
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Top Doctors
The main lobby of The Johns Hopkins Hospital’s new Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Na
Top Doctors 2012
SNEAK PEAK: Feeling under the weather? Here are 378 great physicians in 63 specialties, all chosen by their peers as the best in the region.
The Ultimate On-Call Doctor
University of Maryland’s telemedicine department extends physicians’ reach.

 Deborah Kiel lives in Centreville, the county seat of Queen Anne’s County on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. It’s a lovely town, with a population of just under 2,000 people, but not necessarily a hotbed of specialized medical care.

Living in such a remote locale might have been a problem for Kiel, who suffers from ulcerative colitis, a chronic intestinal disease that requires constant...

Inside Shock Trauma
A look at life and death in the world’s most advanced emergency room.

Allie Gold remembers being in the golf cart. She doesn’t recall falling out. Having completed her sophomore exams at the Maret School in Washington, D.C., the 16-year-old spent Memorial Day weekend with a girlfriend’s family on Gibson Island. The girls weren’t drinking, weren’t horsing around. It was the middle of a lovely day and Allie just fell out somehow.

An emergency room...

Where The World Comes To Get Well
Inside Baltimore’s booming health-care tourism industry.

In 2004, Kuwaiti businessman Adel Alzankawi received word that his wife had a malignant tumor. Concerned that local doctors would not be able to remove the growth and save her life, he went to the Internet.

“I typed in ‘best hospital in the world,’” he recalls. “It came back ‘Johns Hopkins.’”

Months later, Alzankawi and his wife traveled to Baltimore to have her tumor removed....

Healing House
A Baltimore nonprofit restores lives shattered around the world.

“Are you missing something?” the young man asked Clarisse, then a Cameroonian undergraduate student, a day after police broke up a campus protest. “I think I have something that belongs to you.”

The young man looked like any other student at her West African state university, but Clarisse was suspicious. During the chaos, as police made arrests, she’d lost her student I.D. card, and she...

True Blue
An Annapolis mom finds catharsis and clarity in writing about her depression—and helps thousands in the process.

When she's seated next to a stranger on a plane, Therese Borchard of Annapolis is often asked what she does for a living. "Well, I write a mental health blog," Borchard explains.

"How did you get into that?" goes the next question, typically. "Are you a therapist?"

Borchard's answer is always the same.

"No," she says straightforwardly. "I'm a patient."

Borchard, 39...

The Doctor Will See You Now
The role of the D.D.S. may move closer to that of the M.D.

When New York dentist Catrise Austin began offering rapid HIV tests to her dental patients last August, she was surprised at how receptive they were to the idea. "A lot have said, 'Wow, you just saved me an extra trip to the doctor' or 'Not even my doctor has offered me an HIV test.'"

The test, which Austin offers free to her patients, "literally takes two minutes to administer," and...

Fast Forward
From fancy chairs to high-tech photos, dentists get wired and inspired.

Remember that goopy, chalky-tasting stuff in the mold that the dentist made you keep in your mouth for what seemed like forever so he could make an impression for a crown or inlay?

It made an impression, alright, but like so many technologies in dentistry, it’s gotten a little long in the tooth. Sink your teeth into this, instead: In the not too distant future, the dentist will do a...

Rushing into the Rubble
On the ground with Baltimore doctors and nurses responding to the Haitian earthquake.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti: Ten days after the massive Jan. 12 earthquake that killed an estimated 200,000 people and left another 1.2 million homeless, Dr. Ken Crawford and Dr. Agha Khan, Baltimore volunteers with disaster-relief organization Humanity First, ramble over the broken, pothole-laden road from Santo Domingo toward the devastated capital. Traveling with a group of American and Canadian...

Growth Industry
Local stem cell researchers offer hope for patients—and a boon to Maryland's economy.

Nancy Rusk's toddler, Bryan, had just turned three when his stomach began to harden. On the next trip to his pediatrician, she pointed it out to the doctor.

"The only odd thing I'd noticed up to that point was that when Bryan would watch TV, he wouldn't sit—he'd lie down," Rusk says.

The pediatrician ordered a sonogram, but wouldn't reveal the results.

"He made an...

Heaven Can Wait
Dubbed the "Daredevil Granny" by the national media, Susie Mann has chosen a "bucket list" over cancer treatment.

In September, 79-year-old Timonium resident Susie Mann fulfilled a lifelong dream to go skydiving. Despite severe nausea leading up to the moment of her descent, Mann took the plunge from a plane at the Skydive Space Center in Titusville, Florida.

"I figured if President Bush could do it, I could do it, too," says Mann. "I don't know what I expected, but I thought there would be a...