Department Blog - December 2015

Drs. Jon Mark Hirshon and Doug Floccare have updated their Cochrane review, “Helicopter Emergency Medical Services for Adults with Major Trauma.” Their new work was published in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews on December 15, 2015, with co-authors Drs. Samuel Galvagno, Robert Sikorski, and Christopher Stephens from the Department of Anesthesiology; Ms. Deirdre Beecher, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, Cochrane Injuries Group; and Dr. Stephen Thomas, Hamad General Hospital & Weill Cornell Medical College, Doha, Qatar.

Ashley Strobel, MD, Vikramjit Gill, MD, and Michael Witting, MD, MS, collaborated with Getachew Teshome, MD, MPH, from the Department of Pediatrics, on the study that led to their article published in the American Journal of Emergency Medicine: “Emergency Diagnostic Testing for Pediatric Nonfebrile Seizures” (33:1261-1264, 2015).

Darlene Robinson, MD, MPH, is the author of the case report titled “Adrenal Mass Causing Secondary Hypertension,” published in the November issue of The Journal of Emergency Medicine. The manuscript was accepted outright (no revisions requested) by the journal’s editor in June.

Ben Lawner, DO, MS, EMT-P, delivered the keynote address (“Critical Care in the Air - and Everywhere!”) at this year’s Eastern Shore Emergency and Critical Care Symposium, held at Chesapeake College in Wye Mills, Maryland, on November 12. This annual conference is sponsored by Maryland ExpressCare, the regional communications and critical care transport system, and attended by critical care transport and hospital-based professionals from the University of Maryland Medical System network. Among the many University of Maryland faculty members who presented lectures at this evening were Walter Atha, MD, Regional Director, Eastern Shore Emergency Medicine, and Thomas Chiccone, MD, an emergency physician at the Memorial Hospital at Easton.

Amal Mattu, MD, presented the keynote address, “Managing Cardiac Arrest: 2015 and Beyond,” at the Scientific Conference sponsored by the Emirates Society of Emergency Medicine, held in Abu Dhabi in early December. During the conference, he presented lectures titled “Myocardial Infarction in the Presence of Left Bundle Branch Block” and “CT Angiography for the Diagnosis of Acute Coronary Syndromes.” In addition, he led an 8-hour preconference Advanced ECG Workshop that covered cardiac ischemia, ischemia mimics/confounders, and dysrhythmias.

Ben Lawner, DO, MS, EMT-P, presented a lecture titled "Where We Are with RSI: Through the Glottic Opening" at the 36th Annual Virginia EMS Symposium, held in Norfolk in mid-November. This conference brings together more than 1500 EMS providers from across the state to earn continuing education credits and review recent advances in prehospital care.

Michael Abraham, MD, MS, is the lead author of the article titled “Special Considerations in Trauma Patients,” published in the November issue of Emergency Medicine Clinics of North America. The topic for this Clinics issue is behavioral and psychiatric emergencies. Mike’s co-authors are Patrick Aquino, MD, a psychiatrist at Lahey Medical Center in Burlington, Massachusetts, and Dick Kuo, MD, formerly on our emergency medicine faculty and now a member of the medicine/emergency medicine faculty at Baylor College of Medicine. Amal Mattu, MD, continues in the role of consulting editor for the Clinics series.

Drs. Tareq Al-Salamah, Haney Mallemat, Michael Witting, Mike Winters, and Bryan Hayes, in collaboration with Drs. Michelle Hines and Emily L. Heil from the School of Pharmacy and Dr. J. Kristie Johnson from the Department of Pathology, published an article in the December issue of the Journal of Emergency Medicine, titled “Resistance Patterns of Escherichia coli in Women with Uncomplicated Urinary Tract Infection Do Not Correlate with Institutional Antibiogram.” Based on culture results from otherwise healthy women with uncomplicated urinary tract infections treated in UMMC’s emergency department, the authors suspect that hospital antibiograms overestimate E. coli resistance rates for several antibiotics. The abstract is available at www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26281821.

Joseph Martinez, MD, Sarah Sommerkamp, MD, RDMS, and Brian Euerle, MD, RDMS, are the authors of the article titled “How We Started an Elective in Emergency Bedside Ultrasound,” published in the December issue of Medical Teacher (37:1063-1066, 2015).

Dr. Laura Bontempo, along with Dr. Neda Frayha and Dr. Philip Dittmar from the Department of Medicine, have designed a “boot camp” that they offer to seniors before graduation from the University of Maryland School of Medicine. The training program was the focus of a breakout session, led by Dr. Frayha, at the 2015 National Resident Matching Program conference (“Transition to Residency: Conversations Across the Medical Education Continuum”), held in New Orleans in early October. The session was titled “Implementation of a Specialty-Neutral Internship Preparation Camp: Lessons and Successes.”