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Show Turn of Card May Reveal Fate Of Young Birth Defecfs Victim (i .r" I i " ; " i lLwj - ' At March of Dimes Birth Defects Study Center, Johnny X shown against background of electronic computer card which records his life so far-and his chances of survival. Johnny X from Tennessee is nine months old. His head is extremely large for the small body. He has water on the brain. When his mother recently took Johnny to the Birth Defects De-fects Study Center at Vander-bilt Vander-bilt University School of Medicine, Medi-cine, Nashville, Tenn., for specialized trearment of this disease, known medically as hydrocephalus, their first appointment ap-pointment was with a doctor who had a most unusual assistant assist-ant an inanimate electronic sorter. Dr. Robert E. Merrill, assistant assist-ant director of the Birth Defects De-fects Study Center, a research unit financed by The National Fountion-March of Dimes, explained: "This apparatus Is something unique when applied to birth defects. It can be a lifesaver. It's an IBM machine, and its memory is many thousand times more retentive than the proverbial elephant's. In effect, our mechanical robot here is going to interview Johnny and, although I'm Johnny's doctor, I'm reiilly acting only as a sort ' of glorified office boy to the machine." 1 Using a device somewhat re- ' rembling a typewriter keyboard. Dr. Merrill began punching a rectangular oblong green card, measuring about 7 x 3. Each perforation represented the mother's answer to one of a long list of questions. Her answers an-swers covered such data as Johnny's age and birthdate, mother's age at delivery, Illnesses Ill-nesses of mother during pregnancy, preg-nancy, any stillbirths, any physical defects in husband or wife, Johnny's weight, his age when his head started to enlarge en-large and head circumference. Scores of other vital facts are fed into the machine that never forgets. When the sorter finishes "interviewing" "in-terviewing" Johnny, the green card has recorded for all time and in capsule form the infant's in-fant's past and present life, and his family background. More significantly, the electronic elec-tronic device also faithfully remembers the case histories of hundreds of other Johnnys whose brain fluid is blocked as it is with this boy. Dr. Merrill has only to run these cards through the highspeed high-speed sorter to compare these life histories with Johnny's. Most important of all, for this youngster and his apprehensive appre-hensive parents, is that the sorter can help the doctor fori.: a reasonably accurate idea of Johnny's immediate future; help him decide on the advisability advisa-bility of surgical insertion of a "shunt" or plastic tube to draw off the excess fluid into the blood stream; and indeed. assist the physician in predicting predict-ing the future course of the disease. This is done by a study of past performances of other hydrocephalic hy-drocephalic infanta whose medical med-ical circumstances closely resemble re-semble those of this baby. That data is available almost instantly in-stantly "in a minute fraction of the time," as Dr. Merrill says, "required to go through the records by hand." Thi? comparative diagnosis "can save a child's life," he adds. "At least one thing we now can have up-to-date to guide us, and guide us instan- taneously, is our experience. In five minutes, usually, the sorter can give us information that helps us decide precisely what to do in Johnny's case and what not to do." Aside from the Birth Defects Study Center at Vanderbilt, The National Foundation-March of Dimes has financed similar centers at Children's Hospital. Columbus, Ohio, and at the University of Oklahoma Medical Med-ical Center at Oklahoma City. Eventually, when the experiment experi-ment Dr. Merrill is conducting is completed, the sti'7 centers are expected to peel their records rec-ords of hundreds of victims of significant birth defects for the benefit of all Tragically, there are about 250,000 such infants born yearly la the United States. ' |