Sudden cardiac death focus of annual preventive cardiology forum

Seven experts in the field of preventive cardiology will present “How to Achieve Ideal Cardiovascular Health and Prevent Sudden Cardiac Death in the 21st Century” at this year’s annual Preventive Cardiology Forum, which will be held from 7:30 a.m. to 1:10 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 5 in MSB 3.001.

Dr. Francisco Fuentes, program director and professor of medicine, will lead one of two panel discussions at the 21st annual event. Other speakers from UTHealth, Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Center, and Baylor College of Medicine will address new guidelines for CPR; smoking prevention and cessation; a new vision for hypertension control; and other topics related to cardiovascular disease prevention. Via a live video stream from the Universitat de Girona in Spain, Dr. Ramon Brugada will present strategies for the prevention of cardiac rhythm disorders and sudden cardiac death.

The forum is free and geared toward healthcare professionals. The forum will be webcast at The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, the Universitat de Girona, Memorial Health System of East Texas in Lufkin, and The University of Texas School of Public Health Brownsville Regional Campus, which is part of UTHealth.

Register here. For more details, call 713.500.6576.

— Meredith Raine, Office of Advancement, Media Relations

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UT System recognizes physicians for quality, safety improvements

For the second time in as many years, a physician representing the Medical School and Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Center Campus has taken top honors at the annual UT System’s Clinical Safety and Effectiveness Conference.

Besting more than 200 other abstracts, Dr. Pratik Doshi, director of emergency critical care and attending physician in the Emergency Center and medical intensive care unit (MICU), won for his abstract, “Improved Care for Emergency Center ICU Admits.”

Doshi’s quality improvement project, conducted jointly with the Emergency Department (ED) and the MICU, focused on decreasing turnaround times for admissions to the MICU from the ED. He embarked on the project after baseline data showed transfers taking longer than four hours resulted in an 18 percent higher mortality rate and an 11 percent higher average length of stay.

After analyzing the data, he and his team introduced a qualifying admissions tool to help improve turnaround time, including an admissions pre-qualifying checklist, standardized nurse documentation, and a bed-management process redesign. By creating a new standard operating procedure and providing extensive education for faculty, residents, and the nursing staff to highlight issues and clarify the processes, they were able to decrease the turnaround time, resulting in an 18 percent decrease in the average length of stay for those patients.

“We learned so much by actually taking the time to do an in-depth analysis of our original admissions process,” Doshi said. “We found room for improvement at every step along the way, which was both eye-opening and insightful.”

Since introducing the new protocol, 75 percent of admissions to the MICU from the ED have taken less than four hours. Doshi and his team said they hope that, as that number grows closer to 100 percent, a notable decrease in mortality will ensue.

Also recognized at the conference in a new category honoring the sustainability of their quality improvement efforts were Dr. Bela Patel, assistant chief medical officer and executive director of critical care at Memorial Hermann-TMC, and Dr. Felix Tsai, assistant professor of pediatric cardiovascular surgery, both of whom are Physician Quality and Safety Academy members.

Patel’s work in the MICU with Dr. Khalid Almoosa, Tammy Campos, Ruth Siska, Drs. Lillian Kao, Brandy McKelvy, and Pratik Doshi, resulted in the presentation, “Evolution of CS&E Program Impact—A Strategic Integration of Projects to Improve Patient Flow by Improving Quality of Care.”

Tsai was recognized for his second project, “Developing a Surgical Site Infection (SSI) Bundle to Improve Patient Outcomes,” which was co-authored by Kathy Masters, Dr. Douglas Maposa, Dr. Lillian S. Kao, Charles Monney, and Dr. Galit Holzmann-Pazgal.

“Not only were the outcomes of their quality projects remarkable, but both Dr. Patel and Dr. Tsai have achieved so much in terms of sustaining their results, growing the span of their projects, and reaching out to other physicians and clinicians to share their best practices,” said Kathy Luther, director of healthcare improvement, Performance Excellence master black belt, who helped create and facilitate the Academy.

“It is a remarkable accomplishment that out of six awards given at this year’s conference, our physicians took home three,” said Dr. Jeffrey Katz, chief medical officer for the Memorial Hermann-TMC Campus, “We have much to be proud of.”

— Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Center, Internal Communications

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Cullen Trust for Higher Education Symposium focuses on translational research

The fourth annual Cullen Trust for Higher Education Symposium on Translational Research will kick off at 4 p.m., Friday, Jan. 14.

Hosted in the Onstead Auditorium and foyer, 3rd floor, George and Cynthia Mitchell Basic Sciences Research Building (BSRB), the symposium will highlight the outstanding translational research at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth), The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center (UT-MDACC), and Baylor College of Medicine (BCM), and is open to all faculty, students, and community friends.

Keynote speakers and topics include Dr. Russell Broaddus, associate professor, Department of Pathology, UT-MDACC, who will present, “Biomarkers in Women’s Cancers—Med school and grad school taught me how to walk; I had to teach myself how to run,” and Dr. David Spencer, professor and vice-chair, Department of Pathology & Immunology, BCM, who will present, “Turning On Dendritic Cell Vaccines in situ Leads to the Future of Anti-Cancer Vaccines.”

In conjunction with the symposium, an MD/PhD Career Development Workshop will be held Jan. 15 for current and prospective MD/PhD students.

For more information, visit the website.

The Cullen Trust for Higher Education, under the chairmanship of Corbin Robertson, Jr., made a gift of $1.115M over five years to support, strengthen, and grow the MD/PhD program at UTHealth/UT-MDACC (joint program) through the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, and BCM. As part of this grant and for the purpose of attracting the highest caliber undergraduates throughout the nation to the MD/PhD programs here, an annual research symposium is hosted jointly to feature outstanding translational researchers in the Texas Medical Center.

This award also provides the full stipend for selected incoming MD/PhD students each year at both programs during the medical training portion of their education.

The 2010–2011 Cullen Trust for Higher Education MD/PhD Fellows are Pushan Dasgupta and Sarah Wu, UTHealth/ UT-MDACC; and Prasanna Ramachandran and Thomas Shum, BCM.

— Linda Carter, Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences

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Yatsu retirement reception set for Jan. 14

Following a 28-year career at the Medical School, Dr. Frank Yatsu has retired, effective Dec. 15. A retirement reception honoring his years of service and accomplishments will be held 3–5 p.m. Friday, Jan. 14 in the Fifth Floor Gallery.

Yatsu came to the Medical School in 1982 as the second chair of the Department of Neurology—a position he held until 1995. He most recently served as the Roy M. and Phyllis Gough Huffington Distinguished Chair and professor of neurology.

A native of Los Angeles, Yatsu received his baccalaureate from Brown University and his medical degree from Case-Western Reserve University School of Medicine. After internship and residency in internal medicine at University Hospitals in Cleveland, Ohio, he did a neurochemistry fellowship at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York and then served as lieutenant commander at the U.S. Naval Hospital in Great Lakes, Ill. He then joined the faculty at the University of California in San Francisco, where he became the vice chair of the Department of Neurology and chief of neurology at San Francisco General Hospital. In 1975, he moved to Portland, Ore., where he assumed the chairmanship of the Department of Neurology at the Oregon Health Sciences University (OHSU), a position he maintained until moving to Houston in 1982.

After stepping down as chair of the UT Department of Neurology in 1995, he continued his clinical and research activities while at the same time turning his attention to global stroke issues. Since 2004, he served as the director of the Global Stroke Initiative, a joint enterprise of the World Stroke Organization and the World Health Organization.

Yatsu is widely recognized as one of the pioneers of the modern era of cerebrovascular disease. He was the principal investigator of one of the first NIH-funded “Stroke Centers” while at OHSU. He has been one of the few neurologists studying the molecular basis of lipid metabolism underlying cerebrovascular atherosclerosis—research that continues to this day. He was the leading investigator of some of the first clinical trials of acute stroke therapy, and was one of the founding editors of the most highly regarded textbook in stroke, Stroke: Pathophysiology, Diagnosis and Management, now in its fifth edition. He has been widely recognized as an outstanding teacher, receiving the Kaiser Best Teacher Award from UCSF in 1970, Dean Baird Best Teacher Award from OSHU in 1977, and Best Teacher Award in Neurology at UT from 1983–1995. Yatsu has an encyclopedic memory, a renaissance interest, and a passion for medical and world issues. He is a patron of the arts and an entertaining raconteur.

The Department of Neurology is grateful to Yatsu for his leadership and contributions to the mission of our school and cordially invites you to attend Friday's reception.

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Mission accomplished