Department Blog

Congratulations to Dr. Brian Browne on his receipt of the 2013 Health Services Leadership Award from the Baltimore Area Council of the Boy Scouts of America. This award is presented in honor of outstanding work in the medical community and as gratitude for support of Special Needs Scouting in Maryland.

Dr. Amal Mattu is the recipient of the 2013 Award for Outstanding Contribution to Education from the Amercian College of Emergency Physicians. This prestigious award was presented to Amal during this year's Scientfic Assembly, held in Seattle in October. Recipients of this award are recognized and honored for their contributions to academic emergency medicine, for making a major educational impact on the specialty, and for developing new teaching tools. Congratulations, Amal, on this well-deserved award!

Faculty members Mike Abraham, Fermin Barrueto, Dan Lemkin, and Jon Mark Hirshon published an article titled "Propofol for Procedural Sedation and Analgesia Reduced Dedicated Emergency Nursing Time While Maintaining Safety in a Community Emergency Department," in the September issue of The Journal of Emergency Nursing. The lead author is Joshua Reynolds, former EM resident, who is now a clinical instructor at the University of Pittsburgh.

Emilie Calvello, MD, and Christian Theodosis, MD, guest edited the November issue of Emergency Medicine Clinics of North America, on the topic of dangerous fevers in the emergency department. Contributors include Jennifer Reifel Salzberg, MD, MPH, Andrea Tenner, MD, MPH, Bryan Hayes, PharmD, Joe Martinez, MD, Fermin Barrueto, Jr, MD, and Walter Atha, MD.

Congratulations to Brian J. Browne, MD, and Michael E. Winters, MD, for being named "Top Docs in Emergency Medicine" in the November issue of Baltimore Magazine. Recipients of this honor are chosen through a survey of 10,000 physicians in the Baltimore area, asking where they would send a member of their family for medical care.

Ben Lawner, DO, EMT-P, and Tom Chiccone, MD, were faculty members for the 8th Annual Eastern Shore Emergency and Critical Care Symposium, held in Easton on October 3. Dr. Lawner’s topic was prehospital trauma resuscitation, and Dr. Chiccone, from Memorial Hospital at Easton, spoke on blast injuries. The event was sponsored by University of Maryland ExpressCare.

Amal Mattu, MD, was the keynote speaker (and the only speaker from the United States) at the "Emergency Medicine Update‒Europe" conference, held in Haro, Spain, in late September. He presented three lectures: “Syncope Made Simple,” “Dysrhythmias in the ED,” and “Emergency Care of the Elder Patient.”

In a case report published in the September issue of the Journal of Medical Toxicology, Dr. Fermin Barrueto, Jr., and colleagues from George Washington University and the Center for Occupational and Environemental Neurology, describe a patient's exposure to mercury when a bougie broke during a Roux-en-Y gastric bypass procedure. The article concludes with a call for hospitals to stop using mercury-weighted instruments because of the risks they pose to patients and staff.

Brad Cotter, MD, recently published two articles on the use of caffeinated energy drinks by young adults who come to emergency departments. One article was in the August issue of Clinical Toxicology and the other in the October issue of Pediatric Emergency Care.

Y. Veronica Pei, MD, MPH, MEd, published a case report titled “Intrahepatic Hematoma Requiring Hepatic Artery Embolization: A Rare Complication of Extracorporeal Shock Wave Lithotripsy” in the September issue of the American Journal of Emergency Medicine.