Homepage Highlights
The Merit of Minimizing Mistakes
Mar. 27, 2024—Progress across biomedicine and health is attended by a series of well-knit statistical inferences. Statistical inference tells you whether that obscure human trait that has seized your imagination is apt to be a blind alley or a useful (and publishable) biomarker of disease risk. It estimates how many willing patients you’ll need to test your...
Lessons in Love
Mar. 27, 2024— Nearly 40% of doctors have married other doctors or health care professionals, according to the American Medical Association. For many physician couples, medical school is where they met and fell in love. This is certainly the case for several Vanderbilt University School of Medicine (VUSM) alumni, some of whom met their partners within the...
A ‘Site” for Sore Eyes
Mar. 27, 2024—Four years ago, Roger Lasater went outside to look at the stars and the moon. “They just disappeared,” he said. Lasater, 78, of Ashland City, Tennessee, was in the beginning stages of age-related macular degeneration (AMD), a chronic eye disease that affects the part of the retina (macula) responsible for central vision. As the name...
Good Vibrations
Mar. 27, 2024—For decades, Music Row and Vanderbilt University Medical Center, two Nashville institutions a short distance from one another, existed separately. “There wasn’t a wall between them, but there weren’t strong bridges either,” said Roland “Ron” Eavey, MD, SM, emeritus faculty member, former chair of the Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery and former director of...
Old drugs, new uses
Jul. 18, 2023—The odds of bringing a new, safe and effective drug to market are very low. Even for drug candidates that make it to human testing in clinical trials, 90% ultimately fail, often because they cause unexpected and serious side effects. The gauntlet of testing has thwarted so many promising therapies that it has been dubbed...
A Life Rebuilt
Jul. 18, 2023—On Nov. 19, 2020, Sabrina Johanson checked herself out of Vanderbilt University Hospital (VUH), went downtown to meet the father of her two children, and injected heroin and meth for the last time. As an inpatient she had been receiving IV antibiotics for endocarditis, a heart infection from drug use that required six weeks of...
On the Edge of Care
Jul. 18, 2023—Uterine fibroids are small, a so-called ‘invisible disease,’ but they levy an outsize cost: Treatment and lost time at work across the country add up to a whopping $34 billion. That’s a lot of time and money, not to mention that 70% of women in the U.S. will develop at least one fibroid by menopause,...
Champion of Change
Jul. 18, 2023—Change has been a constant in Bonnie Miller’s 36-year career at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. Her presence on campus has been reliable, steady and impactful since completing her surgery residency in 1987 while her roles have been ever evolving: general surgery attending physician, associate dean for Medical Students, associate dean for Undergraduate Medical Education,...
Technology- based teamwork
Jul. 18, 2023—The past few decades have seen a great improvement in surgical technology and instruments, but the future holds limitless opportunities for advancements that will lead to safer, more precise surgeries with better outcomes for patients. Many of those improvements — both small and large — are being designed and tested at Vanderbilt University Medical Center,...
Endangered Species
Jan. 4, 2023—Two thousand fifty years ago, the Roman poet Horace spun a phrase that never seems to lose its power: Carpe diem. Seize the day. The line continues: Put very little trust in tomorrow. By that Horace meant, don’t leave the future to chance. Act now. Make tomorrow better. Carpe diem is a worthy mantra for...
Breathing Easier
Jan. 3, 2023—Vanderbilt University Medical Center pathologist Joyce Johnson, MD, was pulling into her driveway when she heard the news that the U.S. Senate had passed a bill to expand health care benefits for veterans who became ill after exposure to open burn pits and other toxins during their military service. She sat alone in her car...
“I do believe I can change someone’s world.”
Jan. 3, 2023—Kathleen Gallagher, MD’19, is trained to do what most people can’t imagine – triage, evaluate and care for the casualties of combat. Gallagher, a third-year general surgery resident at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and graduate of Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, served as a medic in the U.S. Army National Guard when she was an...
The Expert from Nowhere
Jan. 3, 2023—To understand a protein’s structure is to understand its function, says structural and chemical biologist Jens Meiler, PhD, distinguished research professor of Chemistry. It can take a PhD student up to five sleep-deprived years to determine the structure of a single protein, and of the 20,000 human proteins, only about 17% are considered to have...
Operation Greater Good
Jan. 3, 2023—Rondi Kauffmann, MD, MPH, HS’13, associate professor of Surgery in the Division of Surgical Oncology and Endocrine Surgery, can pinpoint when her spark to address disparities in global health caught fire. She was a wide-eyed 12-year-old staring up at a 10-story mountain of garbage in Manila, Philippines. “It was the summer of 1990, and my...
Feeling like a fraud
Mar. 19, 2021—“They must not know I’m from Queens.” Maureen Gannon, PhD, was in a hotel room in Sweden, talking on the phone with her sister in New York. At the time, Gannon was a new faculty member at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, and she had been invited to give a presentation at an international conference...
Next level data delivery
Mar. 19, 2021—“I want to change the world, not just at Vanderbilt.” In October 2019, in the course of delivering an online seminar sponsored by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Paul Harris, PhD, casually included this aspiration. His talk was part of a series of NIH “webinars” examining how to involve more hospitals and health systems...
Allied forces
Mar. 19, 2021—When Danielle Holt, MD, FACS, began a new job in 2019 as the chief of the Department of Surgery at Blanchfield Army Community Hospital (BACH) at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, she said it felt like coming home. Holt, a lieutenant colonel in the Medical Corps of the United States Army, is a 2005 graduate of Vanderbilt...
Cultivating hope
Mar. 19, 2021—Jackie Hill had taught early childhood education at Chattanooga State Community College for 24 years when her students noticed something troubling. She was giving them the same assignments repeatedly, or she’d give them the wrong assignment. There were other indications, too, said her longtime friend and life partner Ivan O’Neal. In 2011, Hill traveled with...
The Race to Rein in Renegade RNA
Oct. 5, 2020—How is it that an encapsulated, single strand of genetic material called SARS-CoV-2 can cause so much havoc? By the middle of September, nine months after an outbreak of viral pneumonia was first reported by health authorities in Wuhan, China, the RNA virus that causes COVID-19 had infected more than 29 million people worldwide and killed...
One Psychiatrist’s Journey
Oct. 5, 2020—Reid Finlayson, MD, MMHC, was nine months into his first year of psychiatric residency training when he awoke on the seventh floor of a psychiatric hospital in downtown Toronto, Ontario. It was Easter morning in 1974, and hazy memories of being “wrestled to the floor by a sea of faces dressed in white” injecting him...
The Other Side of the Bed
Oct. 5, 2020—A month before his 49th birthday, Geoffrey Fleming, MD, had a biopsy of his liver to diagnose an unidentified metastatic disease that he already knew was “something bad.” The next day, he jetted off to Scotland for a family golf trip, deferring the results of his procedure until his return. On Aug. 26, 2019, he...
“Living up to our true mission”
Oct. 5, 2020—In the 40 years since André Churchwell, MD, graduated from medical school, his contributions to diversity and inclusion work have changed the face of U.S. medical education. Since July 2019, Churchwell has served as the interim Vice Chancellor for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion and the Chief Diversity Officer for Vanderbilt University. On May 27, the...
From Vietnam to Vanderbilt
Mar. 12, 2020—Duc Pham, MD’98, often speaks about how lucky he has been in his life. He recounts acts of kindness by teachers who helped him succeed in school, by organizations that offered him scholarships to attend medical school, and by the United States for welcoming his family after they fled Vietnam following the Vietnam War. Pham...
Lasting Impressions
Mar. 12, 2020— A Decade of Devotion By Scott Borinstein, MD, PhD, Director, Pediatric Sarcoma Program and Adolescent and Young Adult Oncology Program I can halt any conversation at a party by answering a single question, “What do you do?” and if I reply honestly that I am a pediatric oncologist, the awkward pause follows. “Oh, that must...
Inside VUSM Admissions
Mar. 12, 2020—On a cold December Monday morning, six women and seven men, all smiling and similarly dressed in black or grey suits, chat quietly around a U-shaped conference table on the third floor of Annette and Irwin Eskind Family Biomedical Library and Learning Center, home to Vanderbilt University School of Medicine (VUSM). Out of 6,000 applicants,...
Progress Report
Mar. 12, 2020—Bill Cutrer, MD, MED, remembers his first day of medical school in the late 1990s well. He and his fellow scrub-clad classmates, many of whom had never seen a dead body before, somewhat apprehensively assembled at the gross anatomy lab. The room was thick with the smell of formaldehyde and lined with sheet-shrouded steel tables,...
In Search of a Solution to Suicide
Mar. 12, 2020—The first time Samantha Nadler was hospitalized for suicidal thoughts was in 2001. She was 12. “I told my school psychologist I didn’t want to be here anymore,” said Nadler. “He called my dad, and I was admitted to the hospital for five days. That kickstarted a series of many hospitalizations to come.” At 14,...
Keeping Pace
Sep. 9, 2019—Nashville, once a mid-size city with a Southern small-town feel, is experiencing explosive growth. It’s bursting at the seams with unparalleled new construction, exciting new employment opportunities and a bustling food and entertainment scene. But along with Nashville’s rapid growth comes uncertainty and struggle — a need for affordable housing, better schools, mass transportation options...
Profiles in discovery
Sep. 9, 2019—Infectious diseases. Addiction. Mitochondrial diseases. Glioblastoma. In this issue of Vanderbilt Medicine, we share glimpses of five basic scientists in the early stages of their careers who are tackling these tough clinical problems by probing structures of individual proteins, cell identity, signaling pathways and animal decision-making behaviors. They are part of Vanderbilt University School of...
Minds on Trial
Sep. 9, 2019—If a man breaks into a house, dresses himself in the homeowner’s clothes, eats food from the pantry and refuses to leave when he’s discovered because he believes he rightfully owns the house, should he be held as criminally accountable as someone who breaks and enters with intentions of stealing? Should his mental state play...
A Class Act
Sep. 9, 2019—The glamour of being a neurosurgery resident is a yarn. It’s a world of busy calls, sharpening skills, the occasional moments of doubt, and seemingly more obligations than unlimited coffee could fuel — even if time stretched to 30 hours in a day. Somehow, though, it all gets done for the three third-year neurosurgery residents,...
Broken
Sep. 9, 2019—David Covington didn’t want to leave behind his hometown of Iowa City to move to Nashville, but when his wife, Natalie, wanted to follow her PhD adviser to Vanderbilt University School of Medicine and continue her education in Tennessee, Covington supported her. Little did he know then the move might dramatically alter the fate of...
Smart Investment
Sep. 9, 2019—Diagnosed with colon cancer, Melba Martin, 88, needed surgery to save her life, but her colorectal surgeon, Timothy Geiger, MD, knew that her frailty and anemia, coupled with concerns about her heart, put Martin at high risk for developing complications both during and after surgery. Martin told Geiger she absolutely had to recover quickly so...
Outgrowing Childhood Diseases
Mar. 1, 2019—Before the 1950s, it was rare for a baby born with cystic fibrosis (CF) to survive to more than 5 or 6 years of age. In 1962 the median survival was about 10 years with few surviving into their teen years, according to the National Institutes of Health. During the 1980s, the average lifespan increased...
Flu: An old, but unconquered enemy
Mar. 1, 2019—One hundred years ago, multiple “waves” of a deadly flu swept across the world. Ultimately, the 1918 flu, which lingered into 1919, infected most of the world’s population and killed 50 million people. At the time, the cause of the flu outbreak was not understood, and there were no antibacterial medicines, ventilators or intensive care...
A Delicate Dialogue
Mar. 1, 2019—When Nashville, Tennessee, resident Judy Williams recently had a replacement battery for her car installed, she left the service man a bit speechless after he explained the new part’s warranty. “I came home and immediately sent an email to my kids and to a few friends, and I said, ‘I told him my new car...
Handle with Care
Mar. 1, 2019—Neonatologist Stephen Patrick, MD, MPH, cares for one of the unintended consequences of the rampant opioid crisis — babies born with drug withdrawal — and he’s on a quest to reduce that part of his practice. He’d prefer not to treat babies with drug withdrawal, or neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS), but it’s part of the...
Vaccinating the Vulnerable
Feb. 28, 2019—On Halloween morning, a patient nervously listened to Greg Fricker, fourth-year medical student from Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, as he explained the importance of receiving an influenza vaccine. Fricker told the patient that roughly 80,000 people died last year due to complications from the flu and confidently reassured him that getting the vaccine could...
The CME Transformation
Feb. 28, 2019—In November 2018 Vanderbilt University Medical Center physicians and other clinical team members gathered from specialty services that see patients who are more apt to be gravely ill — trauma, cardiology, gerontology and so on. The occasion was an intensive training session spread over three consecutive days, called Difficult Conversations with Seriously Ill Patients. In...
Biology and the Beat
Sep. 13, 2018—Kate Margulis has been passionate about music all her life. But it wasn’t until she came to Vanderbilt to earn a master’s degree in speech and language pathology that she realized she could marry that passion to her undergraduate research in developmental psychology and language and, as a result, help children learn language skills. Margulis...
Happy, Healthy, Whole
Sep. 13, 2018— At a 20-week ultrasound Lindsey and Jeremy Walley were excited to learn the gender of their first-born child. Their elation that it was a girl was met by a sudden quiet and serious look from the ultrasound technician, who then whisked them to another room for a meeting with their obstetrician-gynecologist. The couple knew...
Our Amazing Skin
Sep. 13, 2018—Skin is the human body’s largest organ accounting for 8 pounds and 2 square meters on an adult. It is our fiercest protector, an impervious shield that plays a major role in keeping us alive. Since a substantial portion of our immune cells live in our skin, it teaches our body to fight off infections....
Global Good
Sep. 11, 2018—Street vendors sell caskets along the road that leads to the hospital in Mwanza, Tanzania. It’s a stark reality, this expectation of death distilled into an image, then seared into memory. Reid Thompson, MD, can’t forget what he saw, and he doesn’t want to forget. “When you walk out of the hospital and come down...
Brighter Days Ahead
Mar. 2, 2018— It was like a switch flipped. One month, Ryan Bayley, MD’08, was practicing emergency medicine with the energy and joy he had experienced for years. The next month, his shifts had become drudgery. It was the final year of his emergency medicine and EMS fellowship training in New York City. It was the last...
Invisible Threat
Mar. 1, 2018— Every day, a team of epidemiologists, infection preventionists and data analysts report to work at Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) with a mission: to track invisible trails of microscopic clues, dissect data, analyze lab results, pore over patient medical records and ferret out possible hiding places of disease-causing microbes that could lead to dangerous...
Life Goes On
Mar. 1, 2018— Ahmya Calloway, 13, had end-stage renal failure that impacted her heart function. The Chattanooga, Tennessee, native had been cared for at Monroe Carell Jr. Hospital at Vanderbilt since she was 2 years old. Medication was the first thing Calloway’s doctors tried, but over time her health declined to the point that she needed hemodialysis....
Up Close and Personal
Mar. 1, 2018— Recent advances in imaging technology are enabling scientists to “see” how molecules, cells and tissues are put together — and work together. These unprecedented views of life down to the minutest level are yielding radical new insights into the causes, treatment and prevention of disease. At Vanderbilt University and Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC),...
The Science of Our Senses
Sep. 23, 2017— Mark Wallace, Ph.D., drops his glasses on his desk and they land with a metallic clang. He is making a point about autism. “There’s sound energy and light energy that come from the same place in space,” said Wallace, dean of the Graduate School at Vanderbilt University and Louise B. McGavock Professor of Hearing...
Cracking the Code of the Immune System
Sep. 22, 2017— Of all the threats that face humankind, microbial invaders are among the most frightening. They can overwhelm the body’s immune defenses in a matter of hours. Modern medicine is often powerless against them. And new emerging infections are raising their ugly heads all the time. At Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC), an elite unit...
Gut Reaction
Sep. 22, 2017— Jennifer Fleming was 22 years old, just beginning a career in a new city, when she started having some troubling symptoms. A persistently upset stomach, diarrhea and a small amount of rectal bleeding launched a barrage of tests that ultimately ended in a diagnosis of ulcerative colitis, an inflammatory disease that damages the lining...