ILLUSTRATION FOR TIME BY STEPHEN KRONINGER

BOTOX
2002 was the year of the Botox party—a festive variation on the Tupperware klatch—in which women gather for tea sandwiches and a shot of diluted botulinum toxin in the face. The FDA last year approved the use of Botox, which creates a temporary and localized paralysis in facial muscles, for smoothing wrinkles between the eyebrows. But doctors are also using the shots for such "off-label" applications as crow's-feet, furrowed brows and other frown lines. If the sight of all those glassy Botoxed faces is giving you a headache, get this: researchers at Wake Forest University found that Botox also staves off migraines in sufferers who can't get relief from other drugs. Expect more Botox approvals.

Related Sources:
American Headache Society annual meeting (June 18, 2002)
Food and Drug Administration (Apr. 15, 2002)

BREAST CANCER
Things were confusing enough for breast-cancer patients, but in one regard doctors now have clarity: a lumpectomy followed by radiation, it has been definitively shown, is just as effective as a full mastectomy. Doctors and patients had long been concerned that simply removing a tumor instead of an entire breast might increase the chances of a relapse. But two studies, both published in the New England Journal of Medicine, that followed more than 2,500 women for at least 20 years found no difference in survival rates between those who had had mastectomies and those who had chosen the less drastic lumpectomy with radiation.

Related Sources:
New England Journal of Medicine (Oct. 17, 2002)

BYPASS SURGERY
Doctors called it "pump head"—the mental decline suffered by 30% of heart-bypass patients in the days and weeks following their operations. The theory was that their difficulties in thinking, remembering and paying attention were somehow caused by the heart-lung machines that oxygenate and circulate blood during surgery while the heart is stopped. However, a Dutch study last year found no long-term differences in cognitive decline between heart-lung-machine patients and "off-pump" patients, whose hearts were never stopped.

Related Sources:
Journal of the American Medical Association (Mar. 20, 2002)

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