Las Vegas physician Dipak Desai, MD, will face all 28 felony charges filed against him for allegedly exposing patients to hepatitis C, according to a Nevada state court judge's ruling.

District Court Judge Valerie Adair's decision is the latest setback for Dr. Desai, who was found competent to stand trial after initially being deemed unfit due to the effects of 2 strokes he suffered in 2007 and 2008.

A trial is now scheduled for October 2012, when Dr. Desai will face charges including racketeering, criminal patient neglect and disregard for patient safety. Prosecutors allege that the former gastroenterologist encouraged unsafe injection practices that resulted in 9 endoscopy clinic patients contracting incurable hepatitis C. An investigation found Dr. Desai's clinics had reused syringes, single-use vials of anesthetics and scope-cleaning solution. Since the centers' doors were shut in March 2008, about 250 former patients infected with hepatitis C have come forward with medical malpractice suits.

Defense attorney Richard Wright sought dismissal of 15 counts against Dr. Desai, including a racketeering charge and 7 felony counts of criminal patient neglect and disregard for patient safety. According to Mr. Wright, the allegations against Dr. Desai weren't "specific enough to determine what [Dr.] Desai is accused of doing on what date to what patient."

While allowing that the charges could've been clearer, Ms. Adair rejected Mr. Wright's argument that a 35-page indictment from 2010 was unconstitutionally vague and confusing.

"It's clear what [prosecutors] are charging," said Ms. Adair. "They're charging that these people were infected as a result of their treatment at the facility and as a result of the facility's ongoing failure and disregard for appropriate medical and sanitary practices."

Mark McGraw

Rice University engineering students have come up with a novel approach for lifting the excess abdomen weight that can hamper obese patients' breathing during surgery.

The engineers attached suction cups taken from breast pumps - which they say maintain a strong seal without bruising the skin - to an operating room vacuum system and suspended the cups from a horizontal beam that bears the suctioned abdominal weight and relieves pressure on the abdomen. (Click here to see the device in action.)

Inspiration for the non-invasive suction device came from Mehdi Razavi, MD, a cardiologist and the director of electrophysiology clinical research at Texas Heart Institute in Houston. Dr. Razavi says an obese patient he was operating on began to snore, which indicated potential airway troubles.

It was a "what if?" moment for Dr. Razavi. "We could see that his oxygen levels were going down, and he was trying to push against his abdominal contents to breathe," he explains. "I thought if there was a way to support his belly, he would probably do much better and there would be less chance of having to declare an emergency and put a breathing tube in."

He pitched his idea to the Rice University engineering team, who hope to showcase their response at the American Heart Association Scientific Sessions in Los Angeles in November.

Daniel Cook

Are your infection prevention efforts up to speed? It's generally advisable to find out before a site surveyor from a regulating or accrediting agency does, especially since many now consider stamping out surgical site infections a top priority.

A healthcare consultant who's spent time in the OR as well as the administrator's office offers 9 tips on identifying the most critical areas of concern and correcting the deficiencies that might be found there, from your overall plan of attack to the sterility of your surgical instruments.

David Bernard

It's a good practice to study key clinical and financial statistics of your surgical facility so that you can see how you compare to your recent performance and to industry averages. Tell us in this week's InstaPoll about your benchmarking practices.

Last week we asked a bit of a trick question regarding single-dose or single-use drug vials. Most of the 746 responses chose the right answer: none of the above. We tripped up a few, however, when we asked, "If a single-dose or single-use vial appears to contain multiple doses or contains more medication than you need for a single patient ..."