UVA SOM Faculty News Weekly Round-Up: May 11, 2018

UVA SOM Faculty News Weekly Round-Up
May 11, 2018

• UVA Named Among 100 Great Hospitals in America

Becker’s Hospital Review has recognized UVA Medical Center among 100 Great Hospitals in America. In its listing for UVA, the Review highlighted UVA’s ranking as the No. 1 hospital in Virginia for 2017-2018 by U.S. News & World Report for 2017-18. Becker’s also noted that six UVA specialties – cancer; ear, nose and throat; orthopedics; urology; diabetes and endocrinology; and cardiology and heart surgery – were ranked among the top 50 nationally by U.S. News. Those join four pediatric specialties – cardiology and heart surgery; diabetes and endocrinology; neonatology; and orthopedics – ranked among the top 50 nationally in the U.S. News Best Children’s Hospital rankings.

• UVA Schools of Medicine and Engineering Working Together to Research, Treat Fibrosis

Fibrosis is a deadly thread that winds its way through scores of fatal diseases, from pulmonary fibrosis and heart failure to chronic kidney disease and cirrhosis of the liver.

“In many ways, fibrosis is as significant a problem as cancer, but we have no reliable approaches for early detection or effective treatment,” biomedical engineering professor Thomas Barker, PhD, an expert in pulmonary fibrosis, said. “In effect, we are where cancer researchers were in the 1980s.”

Barker, working with colleagues in the University of Virginia schools of Engineering and Medicine, has launched the Fibrosis Initiative, an effort to mobilize UVA researchers conducting fibrosis-related studies and build connections among them that will lead to potentially groundbreaking, cross-disciplinary investigations.

The Fibrosis Initiative will facilitate research funding, with the ultimate aim of securing a National Institutes of Health “Center of Excellence” award. If successful, Barker envisions UVA emerging as a critical node in the worldwide effort to diagnose and treat fibrosis.

The reception to Barker’s project has been enthusiastic. “I think this big-tent approach is exactly what we need, because fibrosis cuts across so many different areas,” said Mark Okusa, MD, chief of the Division of Nephrology and an expert in acute kidney disease.

• UVA’s Enhanced Recovery After Surgery Program Sees Benefits to Patients

Linda Martin, MD, MPH, Associate Professor of Surgery, is the lead surgeon for UVA’s Enhanced Recover After Surgery program, which has resulted in benefits to patients, including decreased opioid use after surgery and shorter stays in the hospital.

Martin’s review of the program has been published in the Annals of Thoracic Surgery.

UVA SOM Faculty News Weekly Round-Up: May 11, 2018

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