Scared to Death' May be More Than a Saying, Pathologists Find

              2-B Wed., Feb. 27, 1980 SHREVEPORT-BOSSIER The Times
Medical Beat
'Scared to death' may he more than a saying, pathologists find
By SALLY REESE
Times Medical Writer
Two Ohio pathologists say being
"scared to death" may be more than a
figure of speech.
Dr. Marilyn S. Cebelin of Cleveland,
Ohio, says she and her colleague, Dr.
Charles S. Hirsch of Cincinnati, identi-fied
15 cases of people dying after physi-cal
assault even though none of their
injuries was lethal.
She addressed the International
Academy of Pathology's U.S.-Canadian
Division meeting in New Orleans this
"SEreveport pathologists at the meeting
.included Dr. Marjorie Fowler, Dr. I.D.
Sanusi and Dr. Enrique Gonzalez of the
Department of Pathology at LSU Medi-
.cal Center.
Dr. €egeGh believes the Ohio study
provides the first objective medical
evidence of stress as a cause of death.
She said acute stress in humans ap-parently
can provoke lethal changes in
the heart muscle. These changes, unlike
those produced by heart attacks, mimic
"lesions seen in experimental animals
subjected to severe stress, she said.
Eleven cases showed a type of heart
cell death typical of the "stress
cardiomyopathy" that develops in ex-perimental
animals rendered helpless to
anticipate or avert noxious stimuli, Dr.
Cebelin reported. '
Four of the victims, including three
children, were free of any sign of heart
disease. A 2-year-old girl had been tied
up in a vacant room overnight after
being beaten by a stepfather. Dr. Cebelin
regarded this situation as "horrifyingly
similar" to the stressed animal experi-ments.
She and Hirsch did their study at the
Cuyahoga County coroner's office where
Dr. Cebelin is deputy coroner. She also is
assistant director of autopsy pathology
[at the Institute of Pathology, Case
Western Reserve University, Cleveland.
I Hirsch has become director of forensic
pathology at Hamilton County Institute
of Forensic Sciences, Toxicology and
Criminalistics. He teaches at the Univer-sity
School of Medicine in Cincinnati.
They initiated their study because
pathologists are sometimes asked to
determine whether a person was beaten
to death.
They culled the 15 cases from 497
homicidal assaults without any identi-fiable
mechanism of death. The injuries,
mostly cuts and bruises, were inflicted
by such a cane, a coat hanger, a metal
bar and, in the children's cases, a belt
and an electric cord.
Two victims survived in the hospital
for a time after assault and recorded
abnormal heartbeats. Cebelin said the
heartbeats suggested that stress-related
cell changes can alter the rhythm of the
heart and thereby produce death.
Doctor to lecture
Dr. Gerrit W.H. Schepers, director of
heart and lung programs for the Veter-ans
Administration, will lecture at the
VA Medical Center and LSU Medical_
Center here Thursday and Friday.
Schepers is with the VA's central
office in Washington.
He is said to be an authority on
industrial diseases of the chest. His
primary specialty is internal medicine;
his secondary speciality is pulmonary
diseases.
Schepers will lecture at 8 a.m. Thurs-day
during the ground rounds of the
Department Medicine at LSU Medical
"Cenfer~ Industrial diseases of the chest
will be his subject.
AsBestosis, which he has studied, will
be his subject at VA Medical Center at
11:30 a.m. Friday.
Before his VA appointment, he was
chief of pathology for the Washington,
D.C., hospital system. Previously, he
was chief of industrial pathology at
Haskell Laboratories of DuPont Co. and
the Saranac, N.Y., Laboratory.
He is a graduate of the University of
Witwatersrand Medical School in Johan-nesburg,
South Africa.
Doctor to visit
Dr. Worthington G. Schenk Jr., chair-man
of the surgery department at the
State University of New York at Buffalo,
will visit LSU Medical Center here Fri-day.
He is an expert on blood flow and
hemodynamics, an LSU spokesman
said. Medical journals have published
177 of his articles.
He is a member of 15 professional
groups and a past president of the Socie-ty
for Vascular Surgery. He earned his
M.D. from Harvard Medical School in
1945, and did his surgical internship at
Massachusetts General Hospital from
1945-1946. He has been director of
surgery at E.J. Meyer Memorial Hospi-tal
since 1966.