Medicine chest

When the American College of Chest Physicians (CHEST) brought its annual conference to Salt Lake City last week, it drew more than 4,000 physicians with expertise as varied as thoracic surgery, lung disease, asthma, critical care, wilderness medicine, disaster response, sleep medicine, cardiology and more.

For six days, the physicians — who came from all over the world — attended education sessions, checked out poster and slide presentations and heard researchers review new clinical findings. For early birds, satellite symposiums started at 5:30 a.m. And in between all that, they wandered the exhibition hall, examining technologies, learning about medications and collecting everything from squeezable toys shaped like hearts to monogrammed pens.

For a practitioner, it was a candy shop. For a reporter hoping to cover such a varied and presentation-dense program, it was frustrating. Too much information, too many choices, too little time.

Still, the Deseret Morning News roamed the halls at the Salt Palace, attending presentations, reading posters, poring through the book of abstracts outlining the latest research. Here's a sample of what we learned from the emerging news coming from chest physicians.

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E-mail: lois@desnews.com