Month: April 2011

UC Irvine psychologist Karen Rook can trace her interest in how loneliness affects the elderly to her childhood, when she saw a much-loved, once-robust grandmother decline markedly after losing her husband. Unable to manage the family farm on her own, her grandmother moved into an apartment. After breaking her hip in a fall, she ended […]

Lourdes Medina had a common problem: relentless back pain and sciatica caused by a herniated disk and an unstable spine. The solution, however, was anything but common. At UC Irvine Medical Center, she underwent the first robot-assisted spinal surgery on the West Coast. Within a day of her March 15 operation, the 32-year-old Los Angeles woman was […]