CHECKUP : NEWS, TIPS & TRENDS A REAL PAIN IN THE NECK?

Each year, thousands of car-crash victims collect big bucks for chronic whiplash pain, but a new study suggests that this neck and head pain may only be fleeting.

In a study of 202 Lithuanian motorists who had been rear-ended - the subjects were chosen because there was no financial gain in the offing - Norwegian researchers found that within three years of the collision, people whose cars had been rear-ended had no more pain than those who had never been in any accident.

The study was published in this week's issue of the international medical journal the Lancet.

While 35 percent of people in the new study who'd been rear-ended complained of neck pain, so did 33 percent of people who'd never been hit. While half, 53 percent, of accident victims reported headaches, so did half of those, 50 percent, who had not been hit and who were used as a comparison group.

``No one in the study group had disabling or persistent symptoms as a result of the car accident. The results suggest that the late whiplash syndrome has little validity,'' reported researchers led by Dr. Harald Schrader of the department of neurology at the University Hospital in Trondheim in Trondheim, Norway. ``Our results suggest that chronic symptoms were not usually caused by the car accident.''

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Pregnancy and surgery: In contrast to what many doctors were taught in medical school, a woman can have surgery during pregnancy without causing harm to her newborn, a new study shows.

In the review of 38,000 women who delivered over a six-year period, those who had an operation during pregnancy were no more likely to give birth prematurely or to have a low-birthweight baby than those who did not.

The type of anesthesia used, length of surgery and length of time in the hospital also did not appear to affect the newborn's health, it was reported at the annual meeting of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

``Surgery is still recommended only when it is necessary,'' the report said, but doctors may want to rethink their generally negative opinions of surgery during pregnancy as ``it does not appear to have negative effects,'' the Delaware researcher said.

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