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Heart Month: Helping narrowed aortic valves

Celebrating February’s American Heart Month at Emory Heart & Vascular Center

Emory cardiologists are using a promising new non-surgical treatment option for patients with severe aortic stenosis.

Emory University Hospital is one of about 20 hospitals nationwide, and the only site in Georgia, to study this new technology – with 75 patients receiving new valves at Emory since the clinical trial started in October 2007. Researchers hope to receive U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval in late 2011.

The life threatening heart condition affects tens of thousands of Americans each year when the aortic valve tightens or narrows, preventing blood from flowing through normally.

Peter Block, MD

Peter Block, MD, professor of medicine, Emory School of Medicine, and colleagues are performing percutaneous aortic valve replacement as part of a Phase II clinical trial, comparing this procedure with traditional, open-heart surgery or medical therapy in high-risk patients with aortic stenosis.

The procedure provides a new way for doctors to treat patients who are too ill or frail to endure the traditional surgical approach.

During the procedure, doctors create a small incision in the groin or chest wall and then feed the new valve, mounted on a wire mesh on a catheter, and place it where the new valve is needed.

Posted on February 8, 2010 by admin in Uncategorized Leave a comment

Community groups play key role in increasing HIV research participation

Paula Frew, PhD, MPH

Although African Americans make up a significant share of HIV cases in the U.S., they are underrepresented in HIV clinical trials. New research shows that promotion of HIV clinical trials and participation by African Americans can be increased by coalitions that link community organizations to clinical-research institutions.

“Community organizations already have built trusting relationships in their communities,” says Paula Frew, PhD, assistant professor of medicine at Emory School of Medicine. “If HIV/AIDS prevention and HIV clinical research become part of the agendas of these organizations, they can become ideal allies for increasing participation by community members who are at risk for disease.”

Frew was lead investigator in a study published recently in the Journal Prevention Science. She is director of health communications & applied research at the Hope Clinic of the Emory Vaccine Center and an investigator in the Emory Center for AIDS Research (CFAR).

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Posted on February 4, 2010 by admin in Uncategorized Leave a comment

Emory Heart & Vascular Center advances medicine

American Heart Month 2010

Learn about Emory Heart & Vascular Center advances during American Heart Month.

Research led by John Puskas, MD, professor of surgery and associate chief, Division of Cardiothoracic Surgery, Emory School of Medicine, has shown that off-pump bypass surgery reduces the risk of complications for high-risk patients, such as those that are especially frail or those with diabetes, obesity, kidney disease or a history of stroke.

This conclusion comes from a 10-year history of coronary bypass patients at Emory recently published in the Annals of Thoracic Surgery.

Puskas also recently presented long-term follow-up data from the first randomized U.S. trial to compare off-pump with conventional on-pump surgery.

The results from the landmark SMART (Surgical Management of Arterial Revascularization) study, which started in 2000, show that participants who had the off-pump procedure lost less blood, had less damage to their hearts during surgery and recovered more quickly than those who underwent on-pump surgery.

Beating-heart patients in the study also were able to breathe on their own sooner after surgery, spent less time in intensive care and left the hospital one day sooner, on average, than conventional coronary bypass patients.

Posted on February 2, 2010 by admin in Uncategorized Leave a comment

Family of Emory nursing graduates helps Haiti’s orphans

Long before a 7.0-magnitude earthquake ravaged Haiti, a mother-daughter-daughter trio of Emory’s Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing graduates was already working in Haiti to help thousands of orphaned children there.

Cheron Hardy (03MN) joined the staff of the nonprofit Eternal Hope in Haiti (EHIH) shortly after graduating from Emory’s Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing. EHIH was formed in 1993 by nursing alumna Twilla Haynes (80MN) and her daughters, Angela Haynes (91PH, 08N, 09MN) and Hope Haynes Bussewius (93MN).

In 1993, Twilla Haynes (80MN), of Hoschton, Ga. – with the help of her daughters, Angela Haynes (91PH, 08N, 09MN) and Hope Haynes Bussewius (93MN) – founded Eternal Hope in Haiti (EHIH), an organization dedicated to better health care for Haiti’s people. Three years later, they opened the Hope Haven Orphanage in Cap Haitien in the northwest province of Haiti.

Emory Wire, a publication of the Emory Alumni Association, recently sat down to talk with the Haynes about their experiences in Haiti.

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Posted on February 1, 2010 by admin in Uncategorized Leave a comment

Reducing tobacco consumption through taxes

Jeffrey Koplan, MD, MPH

In many countries, taxes on tobacco have successfully reduced its consumption. As world leaders in countries consider raising the excise tax on tobacco products in the coming year, it is vital they consider all the determinants that effectively promote health through taxation and how using business tax preparation services can be useful, say Emory global health experts Jeffrey Koplan, MD, MPH, and Mohammed Ali, MBChB, MSc.

Koplan and Ali discuss the complex issues of health promotion and tobacco taxation in a commentary in the current issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, “Promoting Health Through Tobacco Taxation.”

Mohammed K. Ali, MBChB, MSc

“Effective and comprehensive tobacco control involves a broad mixture of interventions – scientific, behavioral, educational, legal, regulatory, environmental, and economic,” say Koplan, former Emory vice president for global health and former CDC director, and Ali, assistant professor, Hubert Department of Global Health at Emory’s Rollins School of Public Health.

 

Posted on January 28, 2010 by admin in Uncategorized Leave a comment

Emory volunteers sort medical supplies for Haiti

Over the past few weeks, more than 150 Emory University faculty, staff and students, as well as Emory Healthcare staff, have volunteered with Atlanta-based MedShare, sorting thousands of medical supplies that are being shipped to medical personnel on the ground in Haiti.

Volunteering for Haiti relief

Patricia Guasch, RN, director of Emory University Hospital’s rehabilitation nursing services, is one of the many Emory MedShare volunteers lending a hand in the relief effort. Guasch and several of her colleagues from the Emory Center for Rehabilitation Medicine, along with their children, spent the King Holiday weekend sorting supplies at MedShare.

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Posted on January 27, 2010 by admin in Uncategorized Leave a comment

Getting a good night’s sleep is key to health

Sleep expert David Schulman, MD, MPH, assistant professor of medicine, pulmonary, Emory School of Medicine, and medical director for the Emory Sleep Disorders Laboratory, talks with Emory patients every day about how to get a good night’s sleep.

Get more sleep than a cat nap

Here, in his own words, Schulman discusses the topic of sleep:

There is growing evidence that sleeplessness can contribute to illness such as diabetes or heart disease, and many problems can arise when someone has not gotten a good night’s sleep  such as falling asleep while driving or while on the job. We all want to be as healthy as we can eating right, exercising  and I can tell you that getting a good night’s sleep is just as important to overall health. If you have regular sleep problems, discussing this problem with your doctor may be the first step to finding a solution.

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Posted on January 22, 2010 by admin in Uncategorized Leave a comment

A new trend in medicine: redefining disease

Paul Wolpe, PhD

You may have already heard that last month Emory held its fifth annual predictive health symposium “Human Health: Molecules to Mankind.” Researchers, physicians, health care workers and members of the community from throughout the country met to learn about intriguing research and provocative commentary by health care experts.

One of those experts, Paul Wolpe, director of the Emory Center for Ethics, says health care has changed as more and more aspects of ordinary life or behaviors are being redefined as medical. For example, being drunk and disorderly has become alcoholism. Now, virtually all of life is being redefined in biological terms, he says. And that, says Wolpe, has led to an increase in health care costs. We have an enormous amount of new things that we are calling illness, and we expect our health care system to treat them, he says. “We are creating a new category of disease called pre-symptomatic.”

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Posted on January 21, 2010 by admin in Uncategorized Leave a comment

Experts review global health care programs for answers

A recent Knowledge@Emory article looks at a new book titled The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care, by author and journalist T.R. Reid. The book provides an in-depth look at the health care systems in a number of Western nations, including Germany, France, the U.K, Japan and Canada. The countries he profiles offer a mix of public and semi-public health care options.

In addition to interviewing Reid, experts from Emory Healthcare, Emory’s Woodruff Health Sciences Center and the Rollins School of Public Health Department of Health Policy and Management, weigh in on the problem of U.S. health care reform and what can be learned from the examples abroad.

Joseph Lipscomb, PhD

According to Joseph Lipscomb, PhD, a Georgia Cancer Coalition Distinguished Cancer Scholar and a professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management, quality of care, outcomes and cost analysis must be factored into the reform process. Looking abroad, Lipscomb gives generally high marks to the outcome and cost analysis done by the National Health Service and the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) in the U.K. He applauds NICE’s ongoing efforts to estimate the cost-effectiveness of new, expensive technologies by using decision processes that are transparent and solicit input from private citizens, providers and industry.

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Posted on January 19, 2010 by admin in Uncategorized Leave a comment

Working for health around the globe

Emory faculty, staff and students travel the globe, providing care and establishing partnerships within other countries to address intractable health challenges like tobacco use, diabetes and AIDS.

What they do there helps both individuals and populations, now and for generations to come. What they learn from these experiences has indelible effect on their own lives and on the collective life of Emory as a whole.

Emory Healthcare working with MedShare

For example, working to support global from home in Atlanta, Emory Healthcare has works hard to reduce, reuse and recycle, including working with MedShare International, a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the environment and health care through redistribution of surplus medical supplies and equipment to underserved health care facilities in more than 75 developing countries.

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Posted on January 13, 2010 by admin in Uncategorized Leave a comment
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