Spring 2020
Face and Places
Mar. 12, 2020—
Losses
Mar. 12, 2020—George Allen, MD, PhD, who served for more than 25 years as chair of the Department of Neurological Surgery at Vanderbilt, died Dec. 7, 2019. He was 77. Dr. Allen studied medicine at Washington University and did an internship at Duke University before completing a residency in neurosurgery at the University of Minnesota where he...
Class Notes
Mar. 12, 2020—1960s David Johnson, MD, MS, HS’69, FE’83, was honored as one of 15 Giants of Cancer Care at the American Society of Clinical Oncology conference in Chicago in May 2019. The award was given by OncLive, the website for the Oncology Specialty Group. Thomas Chesney, MD’69, HS’70, FCAP, FACP, and Carolyn Chesney, MD’68, BA’65, HS’70,...
Giving in Action: Michael, MD’76, and Melissa Lojek, PhD’78
Mar. 12, 2020—For Michael Lojek, MD’76, and his wife, Melissa, PhD’78, “generosity” is one of the words that comes to mind when they think about Vanderbilt. “Vanderbilt was very generous to me, to my wife, and to other students in graduate and medical school,” Michael said. “I very much appreciated that generosity of Vanderbilt all those years...
Giving in Action: Brian Drolet, MD’09
Mar. 12, 2020—Brian Drolet, MD’09, remembers the fortuitous phone call that dramatically changed the trajectory of his life. It was April 15, 2005 — the deadline to decide which medical school he would attend the following fall. A few hours earlier, he had essentially decided to attend Dartmouth, near his family in New Hampshire. His father, hoping...
To thrive in a world of change, welcome the new
Mar. 12, 2020—Today’s medicine sits at the intersection of expectation and limitation. We work amid breathless acceleration of technology, science and demand for what clinicians are expected to know and manage. So much progress has been made in the last 20 years that it can seem an insurmountable task to stay on top of it all. In...
Alumni Profile: Constance Mobley, MD, PhD
Mar. 12, 2020—Transplant Trailblazer As a molecular physiology and biophysics doctoral student at Vanderbilt, Constance Mobley never had designs on practicing medicine. Her passions were in the lab. The young scholar was infinitely more interested in clinical research. “I wanted to discover how to cure everything in the world,” she says. “I was always interested in...
Alumni Profile: Airron Richardson, MD, MBA, FACEP
Mar. 12, 2020—Career inspired by early influence Airron Richardson, MD’05, MBA’05, attended the University of Michigan on an athletic scholarship, came to the School of Medicine after a stint on the U.S. wrestling team, then capped his University of Chicago residency training in emergency medicine with a sports medicine fellowship at Duke. Today, as a clinician...
Letter from Ann Price, MD
Mar. 12, 2020—Dear Vanderbilt Medical Alumni: It’s clear that 2019 was a busy year for the Vanderbilt Medical Alumni Association (VMAA). We made a concerted effort to increase our presence and support for our VMAA specialty societies at numerous national conferences including ACOG, ACC, ACS, AANS, RSNA, ASPS, ENDO, and ID-week among others. In addition, we held...
Q + A: Donald Brady, MD’90
Mar. 12, 2020—In July 2019 Donald Brady, MD’90, assumed the role of Senior Associate Dean for Health Sciences Education at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine and Executive Vice-President for Educational Affairs at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. He proudly refers to himself a “Quad ‘Dore” having ties to Vanderbilt as an undergraduate student, medical student, resident physician and...
ROSA technology helps ease patient’s violent seizures
Mar. 12, 2020—Daniel Lookabaugh, a 20-year-old electrical engineering student who has epilepsy, has never driven a car because of violent seizures and had to put his schooling on hold last year. His seizures began about age 3. They became more frequent as he got older, then became so intense two years ago that he would dislocate his...
Multisite study focuses on opioid use during pregnancy
Mar. 12, 2020—The Vanderbilt Maternal Addiction Recovery Program is participating in a 12-site clinical trial that will compare two forms of the medication buprenorphine in treating opioid use disorder during pregnancy, and the results could have a potentially significant impact on clinical practice. The study, funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, will randomize participants to...
Research Round-up
Mar. 12, 2020—Less inflammation = better healing Myocardial infarction remains a leading cause of mortality and morbidity worldwide, raising an urgent need for novel therapies. Acute MI provokes an inflammatory response in the heart that removes damaged tissue to promote repair and regeneration. Overactive and/or prolonged inflammation impedes healing, however, suggesting that reducing inflammation may lead to...
Shade Tree Clinic Founder Remembered
Mar. 12, 2020—In 2004 Vanderbilt medical students and classmates Katie Cox and Kristina Collins approached then-VUSM Dean, Steven Gabbe, MD, and Bonnie Miller, MD, then Associate Dean for Medical Students, with a proposal to establish a free medical student-run clinic to serve Nashville’s uninsured population. What started as a summer project resulted in their co-founding the Shade...
No such thing as a low-risk surgery for frail patients
Mar. 12, 2020—Even a minor surgery such as a laparoscopic gallbladder removal can prove to be a high-risk and even fatal procedure for frail patients, according to new research published in JAMA Surgery. A team of researchers from leading U.S. academic medical centers and VA medical centers examined the records of 432,828 patients who underwent a non-cardiac...
E-Cigarettes and Vaping
Mar. 12, 2020—
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,...
“If we don’t do it, who’s going to?”
Mar. 12, 2020—In spring 2018, a new Social Mission Committee was organized, and third-year Vanderbilt University School of Medicine (VUSM) students Mollie Limb and Will Furuyama were selected as co-presidents. Determined to balance the academic rigor of medical school with benevolent ventures, they’re now part of an organized effort to ensure opportunities to address health inequities are...
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,...
Genetics and Heritability
Mar. 12, 2020—Since 2007, Douglas Ruderfer, PhD, MS, assistant professor in VUMC’s Division of Genetic Medicine, has centered most of his research on understanding the genetic architecture of psychiatric disorders and behavioral health traits to better quantify the role genetics play in risk and to understand the biology that leads to disease. By converting large-scale clinical data...
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...
Eskind Biomedical Library – Home to VUSM
Mar. 12, 2020— Originally built in the early 1990s Renovated in 2017-2018 with a $6 million gift from the Annette and Irwin Eskind family Meets Americans with Disabilities standards and LEED Silver certification standards From 1977-2018 Light Hall served as the medical education building for Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. That changed in July 2018 when the...
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,...
Supporting physician wellness
Mar. 12, 2020—Studies suggest one of about every 400 physicians dies by suicide in the United States each year, translating to more than 1 million patients losing their doctor to suicide annually. Compared with the general population, physicians are nearly twice as likely to succumb to suicide. Studies have often pointed to burnout due to heavy workloads...