Department Blog

Jon Mark Hirshon, MD, MPH, PhD, is a co-author of the article tltled "Hospital Discharge Instructions: Comprehension and Compliance Among Older Adults," which was published in the November 2014 issue of The Journal of General Internal Medicine. By contacting a study group of 650 people aged 65 or older after discharge from the University of Maryland Medical Center, the authors documented noncomprehension rates of 5% for follow-up appointments, 27% regarding medications, 48% for exercise, and 50% for diet. In this mulitidisciplinary study, Dr. Hirshon collaborated with investigators from the Department of Pharmaceutical Health Services Research in the UM School of Pharmacy and from the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health and the Department  of Psychiatry in the UM School of Medicine. 

Steven Tropello, MD, MS, presented a poster titled "Coaptive Ultrasound: A Novel Procedural Technique Applicable in Acute Care Settings" at the 44th Annual Congress of the Society of Critical Care Medicine, held in Phoenix in mid-January. Haney Mallemat, MD, participated in the study described by the poster, which tested acute care physicians' proficiency in catheter placement using a patented platform technology that combines magnetic guidance and ultrasound visualization.

Drs. Mike Winters, Joe Martinez, and Haney Mallemat, along with Dr. William Brady from the University of Virginia, are the authors of a review of significant critical care articles published during 2013. Topics include cardiac arrest, sepsis, intracerebral hemorrhage, transfusion, pulmonary embolism, and fluid resuscitation. Their article was published in the December 2014 issue of the American Journal of Emergency Medicine.

Dr. Kinjal Sethuraman and Dr. Semhar Tewelde presented the results of their studies of gender-specific aspects of trauma resuscitation and ischemic heart disease, respectively, at the consensus conference titled “Gender-Specific Research in Emergency Care: Investigate, Understand, and Translate How Gender Affects Patient Outcomes.” The meeting was sponsored by the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine and held in Dallas in May. Their articles describing the studies were published in the “early view” section of Academic Emergency Medicine website in November.

Our department is once again well represented on the pages of Emergency Medicine Clinics of North America. The November issue, on the topic of critical care, was co-edited by Haney Mallemat, MD. Articles were contribued by Drs. David Wacker and Mike Winters ("Shock"), Dr. Michael Scott with Dr. Mallemat ("Assessing Volume Status"), Drs. Kim Boswell and Jay Menaker ("Assessment and Treatment of the Trauma Patient in Shock"), Drs. John Greenwood and Dan Herr ("Mechanical Support"), and Dr. Wendy Chang ("Neurotrauma"). Dr. Mallemat's co-editor on this project was Evie Marcolini, MD, formerly a member of our faculty and now on the emergency medicine and neurosurgery faculties at Yale University. Dr. Amal Mattu serves as the consulting editor for the Clinics series.

Jon Mark Hirshon, MD, MPH, PhD, is a co-author of the article titled "Using Antibiograms to Improve Antibiotic Prescribing in Skilled Nursing Facilities," published in the October issue of Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology. 

Ben Lawner, DO, MS, EMT-P, was a faculty member for the 2014 EMS Symposium sponsored by the Virginia Department of Health and held in Norfolk in early November. He presented a lecture titled "Avoiding Common Prehospital Errors: Don't Bury Your Mistakes!" and presented two workshops on 12-lead ECG interpretation. The symposium was attended by over 1500 providers from across the commonwealth. 

The article on electrical exposure risk during hands-on defibrillation, by Drs. Dan Lemkin, Michael Witting, Michael Allison, Ali Farzad, Michael Bond, and Mark Lemkin, has been named the Artice of the Month by the journal Resuscitation. The article reports measurements of voltages received during CPR techniques applied to cadavers. The authors concluded that rescuers are at risk of exposure to energy levels higher than accepted standards when a defibrillator is used and therefore recommend that rescuers “disconnect” from a patient when a shock is delivered.

Dr. Amal Mattu's newest book, Cardiovascular Emergencies, has been published by the American College of Emergency Physicians. The 21 chapters in this textbook discuss the cardiovascular conditions commonly encountered in the emergency department, “hot topics” such as bedside echocardiography and post-arrest care, and special populations (patients with cancer, HIV, pulmonary hypertension, and implanted devices; pregnant women; and transplant recipients). The concluding chapter discusses risk-management strategies in clinical practice. Chapters were contributed by EM faculty members John Greenwood, MD, Siamak Moayedi, MD, Semhar Tewelde, MD, Mercedes Torres, MD, amd Michael Winters, MD. The manuscripts  were copyedited by Linda Kesselring, MS, ELS, our department's technical editor and writer.