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Stephen Paddock, who killed at least 58 people and wounded hundreds more in Las Vegas...with high-powered rifles, was prescribed an anti-anxiety drug in June that can lead to aggressive behavior...Records from the Nevada Prescription Monitoring Program...show Paddock was prescribed 50 10-milligram diazepam tablets by Henderson physician Dr. Steven Winkler on June 21...Diazepam...studies have shown can trigger aggressive behavior. Chronic use or abuse of sedatives...can also trigger psychotic experiences...“If somebody has an underlying aggression problem and you sedate them with that drug, they can become aggressive,” said Dr. Mel Pohl, chief medical officer of the Las Vegas Recovery Center. “It can disinhibit an underlying emotional state. … It is much like what happens when you give alcohol to some people … they become aggressive instead of going to sleep.”

Roseman University College of Medicine...announced a $10 million pledge gift from the Engelstad Family Foundation, which will help advance the opening of the school...“This is really a very important moment for the history of Roseman,” said Dr. Mark Penn, founding dean for the medical school. “We don’t have state support, so we rely on other money, resources to support what we try to do. We’re thrilled they want to partner with us this way.”...The donation is the largest in the Henderson university’s history, and kicks off a $66 million fundraising campaign. The medical school will be in Summerlin, where the campus nursing school is...The money is needed to hire critical faculty and staff, an important step as the school continues through a new accreditation process…

Clark County has just 317 of them (pediatric specialists and subspecialists), according to the state Medical Examiners Board. That’s about 4.5 pediatricians per a population of 100,000, far below the national average of 7 per 100,000, according to the health services research for the Office of Statewide Initiatives at the University of Nevada, Reno School of Medicine. The data ranked Nevada 47th in the country in its lack of pediatricians....Nevada isn’t the only state being impacted. Shortages are being felt across the country due to the largest overall physician shortage in our nation’s history...According to an Association of American Medical Colleges’ 2016 report, our nation is projected to have a shortage ranging between 61,700 and 94,700 physicians by 2025...Pediatric specialists and subspecialists are two significant areas affected by the shortage. Reasons for this deficit include one-third of current physicians are aging out of the profession, and the reduced number of medical students entering pediatric specialties...Nevada...averages below the national trend with a larger deficit of pediatric specialists and subspecialists...“We’re basically treading water,” said Tabor Griswold...Office of Statewide Initiatives at the University of Nevada...She estimates the area needs slightly under a 50 percent increase in pediatric specialists to meet the U.S. median...

The UNLV School of Medicine is breaking with traditional teaching methods when the school’s 60 medical students start their anatomy class in November...Instead of using cadavers for dissections of the human body, the school invested $600,000 in the use of virtual technology. Students will learn anatomy by using virtual anatomy tables with large, interactive touch screens that are large, super high-resolution computer screens. They cost $100,000 each...The school describes them as body images in a wide variety of perspectives. They are primed with a library of images, such as X-rays, MRIs, CT scans and pathology slides...Students will be able dissect, rotate, slice, and reassemble organs and other anatomic structures as needed. They will download case studies of real patients and examine them. They also can explore the histology and histopathology of the organ systems studied… UNLV will be the first allopathic medical school to use virtual 3-D anatomy...This is a very innovative way of doing this...No one else in the country has attempted to do what we’re doing. We’re cutting-edge at this point...

The bullet wounds that University Medical Center trauma surgeon Dr. Jay Coates saw late Sunday night were to the head, chest, abdomen, legs and arms...“It was like we were in a war zone,” he said early Monday...“From our patients’ wounds, you could tell a high-powered weapon had been used.”...Despite that preparation, UMC medical personnel and others at Sunrise, Valley and St. Rose Dominican hospitals said the carnage...Stephen Paddock unleashed at the...country music festival adjacent to Mandalay Bay was beyond anything you could imagine. Patients arrived so fast that the surgeons and support personnel couldn’t begin to keep up...“It was controlled chaos, a combat medical hospital — blood everyplace,” said Dr. Dale Carrison, head of emergency...staff at UMC...UMC, Southern Nevada’s only Level I trauma center, received 104 patients. Other patients — the final number is still uncertain — were later transferred to the hospital from other medical centers that couldn’t handle the severity of the gunshot wounds...Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center, a Level II trauma center and the closest trauma center to the Strip, treated 214 patients, with at least 30 needing surgery. Fifteen patients died there. The Sunrise system’s other hospitals, Southern Hills and Mountain View, treated nine and eight patients, respectively...Gretchen Papez, a spokeswoman for the Valley Hospital System, said the network of hospitals received a total of 228 patients, eight of whom died. She provided this breakdown by individual hospital: Desert Springs, 105 patients treated; Spring Valley, 53; Henderson, 32; Valley, 29; Summerlin, six; and Centennial Hills, three.

...the Nevada Department of Corrections is preparing to use fentanyl in a three-part drug combination for an upcoming execution....The combination includes the sedative diazepam...the muscle relaxant cisatracurium; and fentanyl...Nevada turned to fentanyl for an execution because the state had no other drugs to carry out a lethal injection after "pharmaceutical industry opposition to the use of their products in executions,"..This fentanyl drug combination is to be used in the execution of 46-year-old Scott Raymond Dozier on November 14 at Ely State Prison in Ely, Nevada...Dozier was sentenced to death after a first-degree murder conviction for the 2002 killing and dismemberment of Jeremiah Miller, 22...The concern is that this specific chemical cocktail that they have proposed has never been used in this way before. It's not like they can point to some success or result. This will be the first time...

A new type of medical facility is popping up in Las Vegas neighborhoods: a combination of a hospital, a place to get specialty care and an urgent care center...It’s called a micro-hospital or a neighborhood hospital...The model is so new that there isn’t much data available to measure their performance in other markets...several local experts are hopeful that micro-hospitals will improve Nevada’s health care system...Dignity Health and Emerus partnered to open three of these neighborhood hospitals in the valley so far this year, with another planned for December...the goal is to improve local access to emergency services and physicians...Microhospitals are able to come online much faster than a traditional hospital...micro-hospitals cost between $15 million and $20 million to build and equip and range between 20,000 and 60,000 square feet...a traditional hospital generally costs between $150 million and $250 million to build and equip and is typically about 74,600 square feet...Since a micro-hospital has inpatient beds and provides hospital services, operators may be able to charge hospital-based rates, allowing for higher reimbursement, despite having lower overhead costs than a hospital...

The state of Nevada is preparing a public information campaign to address the increasing use of marijuana by pregnant women and highlight the potential harm the drug can do to a fetus...The public service TV and radio ads, which will begin airing in December, come as research shows that more pregnant women are using pot. A federal study last year found that marijuana use by pregnant women in the U.S. increased from 2.4 percent in 2002 to 3.9 percent in 2014, a 62 percent jump...Studies in states that have legalized recreational pot suggest the rate of use is far higher...In Colorado, where marijuana was legalized in 2014, one Pueblo hospital reported that the number of babies born with the chemical effects of marijuana in their systems doubled in two years. Dr. Larry Wolk, executive director and chief medical officer of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, called the report anecdotal but noted that the state’s most recent official survey found that 6 percent of pregnant women were using marijuana.

A new nonprofit created by heavy hitters from Nevada’s business and medical communities gave the state a D grade on its first report card on the state’s health care system...The report card was released...by the Nevada Medical Center and is intended to focus attention on improving access to quality health care in the state...Larry Matheis, the NMC’s CEO, said the report card will help state leaders focus on the gaps that must be filled to improve Nevada’s medical standing. Currently, he said, the state’s medical system “resembles a series of isolated communities…due to the lack of collaboration among medical professionals and the dearth of thought given to enhancing our community’s reputation.”...The report card’s grades, based on analysis of data supplied by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other government agencies, show how Nevada fares in the categories of health care access, chronic disease, nutrition and activity, mental health and substance abuse. The grades weren’t all bad, with the state receiving a passing “C” grade on chronic disease and a better-than-average “B” on nutrition and activity.

The UNLV School of Medicine launched its first class July 17 but the community outreach for providing medical care is already underway and will expand in the future...UNLV has taken over eight patient clinics that the University of Nevada, Reno School of Medicine operated. That includes a multispecialty pediatric center, a family and sports medicine clinic, behavioral health and counseling. UNR had 24 offices and clinical spaces and UNLV will create eight patient clinics, many around University Medical Center and others in the northeast valley...The clinical practices are vital to the medical school by providing a training ground for students and residents who’ve already graduated, in addition to the revenue they generate to operate the school...The clinics, which generate about $70 million a year, are running at a deficit of about $6 million to $7 million a year. The school is making organizational changes to reduce that deficit and ultimately have a surplus with local management under UNLV and other operational changes that will bring more patients and revenue into the operation…