Explore UAB

Division of Pediatric Neurosurgery Director Jeffery Blount, M.D., co-authored the introduction to the October 2019 edition of Neurosurgical Focus, which was published earlier this month by the Journal of Neurosurgery. In the introduction to this month’s issue on spina bifida, Blount and his fellow co-authors – Sandip Chatterjee, M.D., Erin N. Kiehna, M.D., Eylem Ocal, M.D., Catherine McClung Smith, M.D. – discuss the broad spectrum of clinical care for spinal dysraphism.

Dr. Jeffrey Blount

Throughout the introduction, titled “Advancing the care of children with spina bifida, prenatally and postnatally,” Blount, Chatterjee, Kiehna, Ocal and Smith examine the decreasing incidence of infants with open myelomeningocele and the management of postnatal sequelae. They suggest that this incidence is partially due to the implementation of folate fortification of commercially prepared foods, the increasingly widespread use of screening ultrasounds and the subsequent terminations of affected pregnancies. According to the authors, the prominent reduction in open MMC cases “represents one of the great public health accomplishments of the 20^th century.”

Blount, Chatterjee, Kiehna, Ocal and Smith conclude in the introduction to the issue that they hope it prompts new discussions of open MMC, as well as of potential strategies to continue to improve the quality of life for all patients with spina bifida.

Read the issue and the introduction here.  

Beginning Nov. 1, UAB Department of Neurosurgery Business Officer Michel Thomas, MSHI, will assume a new role as quality outcomes analyst. This position will support the Department of Neurosurgery, the Department of Otolaryngology and the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery.

Michel Thomas

Thomas will serve as a resource to the three departments by obtaining quality data and assisting with quality improvement projects. First-year goals for this position include developing and providing quality reports and benchmarks to faculty.

This position will work in collaboration with the UAB Hospital Quality Team.

“I have a very close and personal connection to UAB and patient care,” said Thomas, who had a blood clot removed from his brain two years ago by his colleagues in the Department of Neurosurgery. “With my passion for data and knowing firsthand what a patient experiences, I feel it is very important that providers have the information they need to make decisions regarding the quality of care they are providing.”

Growing up in Birmingham, Alabama, Thomas has worked for The University of Alabama at Birmingham since he was 19. He also earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology from UAB in 2012 and completed the UAB Medicine Quality Academy in 2015. This year, Thomas received his master’s degree in health informatics from UAB while continuing to work as a business officer in the Department of Neurosurgery. In January 2020, Thomas will begin pursuit of a Master of Science in Analytics degree with a concentration in computational data and analytical tools from the Georgia Institute of Technology where he will focus his thesis project on the use of machine learning and artificial intelligence algorithms to predict surgical outcomes.

UAB Department of Neurosurgery Clinical Care Coordinator Tracy Rouse, R.N., was recently appointed to the education committee of the Endocrine Nurses Society.

Division of Pediatric Neurosurgery Director Jeffery Blount, M.D., was recently featured in an episode of “Diagnosis,” a Netflix medical documentary series.

In the second episode of the series, Blount provides his opinion on an epilepsy case for a New York family searching for a diagnosis for their 7-year-old daughter.

“It seems that your sweet daughter has what looks in many ways to be Rasmussen’s encephalitis,” Blount told the Gonzales family. “There are variations of Rasmussen’s, and Rasmussen’s is something that we don’t understand everything about.”

The episode, “Second Opinions,” is available on Netflix with a subscription.

The UAB Office of Postdoctoral Education presented Sadashib Ghosh, Ph.D., with the 2019 Dr. Congeniality Award on Wednesday at its annual Postdoc Appreciation Luncheon at the UAB Edge of Chaos. Ghosh is a postdoctoral fellow in the research lab of Professor of Neurosurgery Ichiro Nakano, M.D., Ph.D.

Dr. Sadahib Ghosh

The Dr. Congeniality Award is one of the UAB Graduate School’s Outstanding Postdoctoral Awards and recognizes a postdoctoral student “who has a disposition so kind and pleasant, their presence brightens the atmosphere of the work environment,” according to the Office of Postdoctoral Education.

Ghosh was nominated for the award by his fellow Nakano Lab members, including graduate research assistant Soniya Bastola, administrative assistant Billie Glazier, research scientist Svetlana Komarova, Ph.D., visiting scientist Chaoxi Li, M.D., and postdoctoral fellow Daisuke Yamashita, Ph.D.

UAB Department of Neurosurgery Business Officer Michel Thomas, MSHI, was recently selected to serve on the Clinical Practice Solutions Center’s new Clinical Activities Suite task force. Thomas’ two-year term begins this fall.

Michel Thomas

The CAS task force is one of three new CPSC task forces that were introduced this summer alongside a new name for the organization. Formerly called the Faculty Practice Solutions Center, the CPSC was developed by the Association of American Medical Colleges and Vizient Inc. to reduce the burden of duplicative data collection and survey activities related to provider practice patterns and performance.

As a member of the CAS task force, Thomas will work to help improve reporting guidelines and analytics tools for the organization.

The CAS provides operational insights using specialty-specific comparative benchmarking data for more than 140,000 physicians across the U.S. and delivers insights to help maximize clinical performance.

Dr. Jerry Oakes

UAB Professor of Neurosurgery Jerry Oakes, M.D., and Department of Neurosurgery Business Officer Michel Thomas, MSHI, attended the fourth annual NeuroSafe symposium last month in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

The two-day conference, held Aug. 8-9 at the McNamara Alumni Center on the University of Minnesota campus, focused on improving the patient experience, improving population health and reducing healthcare's per-capita cost.

Michel Thomas

At NeuroSafe 2019, Oakes and Thomas had the opportunity to participate in discussions and sessions dedicated to learning from national experts in the field of neurosurgery and sharing strategies, studies and ideas about improving neurosurgical quality and safety. spend two days discussing and networking with national experts in the field of neurosurgery.

As a result of this year's symposium, the UAB Department of Neurosurgery is now planning a number of collaborative projects with other institutions, including the University of Minnesota, Duke University, the University of Utah and New York University.

A recent paper published in World Neurology ranked UAB Department of Neurosurgery resident Matthew C. Davis, M.D., at the top of its list of U.S. and Canadian neurosurgery residents based on his ResearchGate score of 46.97 at the time of the study’s data collection period.

Dr. Matthew Davis

The study, “Social media in neurosurgery: Using ResearchGate,” compared the ResearchGate scores of 503 neurosurgery residents between the months of February 2018 and May 2018 and reported a mean score of 16.98 among those residents. The investigators concluded that ResearchGate scores are highly correlated to H-index scores in neurosurgery and are predominantly based on the publications associated with a researcher’s profile.

After spending nearly six months training in Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam, UAB Department of Neurosurgery resident Jacob Lepard, M.D., returned to UAB this summer with a renewed sense of purpose and reverence for global neurosurgery.

The UAB Department of Neurosurgery welcomes its new communications director this month, Marissa Keppley, MBA. Prior to this position, Keppley worked in the UAB Health System Department of Marketing and Communications as the physician marketing manager.

The Department of Neurosurgery’s Lori Mehaffey, DNP, RN-BC, and Caitlin Dalgo, CRNP, RNFA, were each recently honored for clinical “excellence” by UAB Medicine.

By Daniel Bracker

The UAB Department of Neurosurgery recently participated in the 2019 Magic City Cycliad, a cancer awareness bicycling event sponsored by the Deep South Cancer Foundation.

By Daniel BrackerKirsten Riley, M.D.

The Department of Neurosurgery’s Kristen Riley, M.D., was recently named secretary of the Southern Neurosurgical Society. Riley has been a member of SNS since 2011 and will serve as secretary until 2021. She is only the second woman to have ever served on the executive council of SNS.

The UAB Cleft and Craniofacial Center at Children’s of Alabama is now home to the only American Cleft Palate-Craniofacial Association-approved teams in the state. The center’s cleft team and craniofacial team both recently received approval from the ACPA, making its comprehensive program the first of its kind to receive this distinction in Alabama.

According to the Associate Press, pharmaceutical company Mustang Bio, Inc. and Nationwide Children’s Hospital announced this week that they have entered into an exclusive worldwide license agreement to develop C134 – the attenuated herpes simplex virus developed for the treatment of glioblastoma multiforme by UAB Department of Neurosurgery Chair James Markert, M.D., MPH, in collaboration with Nationwide’s Kevin Cassady, M.D.

Of this year’s UAB Service Award honorees, nine are faculty or staff members from the Department of Neurosurgery, including Office Associate Martee Posey-Dawson who will be recognized at the annual Service Awards luncheon on March 1 for her 20 year-tenure at UAB.

Division of Pediatric Neurosurgery Director Jeffrey Blount, M.D., hit the slopes last Thursday with a long-time patient, 8-year-old Thomas Summers, according to Park City, Utah, newspaper the Park Record.

UAB Department of Neurosurgery residents Elizabeth Kuhn, M.D., and Jacob Lepard, M.D., were recently named the recipients of two research awards for abstracts they submitted for presentation at the 2019 American Association of Neurological Surgeons Annual Scientific Meeting.

Libby Hancock, a pediatric neurosurgery patient at Children's of Alabama, was born with cerebral palsy and a seizure disorder. As part of her therapy, Hancock began learning needlepoint at age 9. 

By Marina Moody 

The UAB Department of Neurosurgery held its 35th Annual J. Garber Galbraith, M.D., Scientific Session and Lecture on Nov. 9 in the West Pavilion Conference Center.