James E. McDonald, M.D., FACR, chair of the Department of Radiology in the College of Medicine at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS), was invested March 27 as the holder of the Ernest J. Ferris, M.D., Chair in Diagnostic Radiology.

McDonald, who joined UAMS in 2010, was appointed department chair in November 2016. An endowed chair is among the highest academic honors a university can bestow on a faculty member and is established with gifts of at least $1 million, which are invested and the proceeds used to support the educational, research and clinical activities of the chair holder. Those named to a chair are among the most highly regarded scientists, physicians and professors in their fields.

“I congratulate Dr. McDonald for the many accomplishments that have merited this honor,” said UAMS Interim Chancellor Stephanie Gardner, Pharm.D., Ed.D. “From one Southerner to another, the best way to say this is, we appreciate you. We appreciate your leadership at UAMS of our clinical, academic and research activities that support our overall mission, and we appreciate everyone who has helped make this chair a reality.”

The chair is named in honor of Ferris, who chaired the Department of Radiology for 31 years, helping bring comprehensive subspecialty training and highly specialized radiological care to Arkansas. He trained more than 350 fellows and residents at UAMS, six of whom have gone on to become department chairs at various medical schools. Ferris ultimately expanded the department to include 50 radiologists with diverse subspecialties before he stepped down as chair in 2008.

Ferris, who attended Boston University School of Medicine, held faculty positions at Harvard University and Tufts University, and served as chief of radiology at Boston University Medical Center for eight years before being recruited to UAMS in 1977.

Well-known nationally and internationally for his contributions to the field of radiology, Ferris received the American Board of Radiology’s Distinguished Service Award in 2000 and was presented with the Radiological Society of North America’s highest honor, the Gold Medal, in 2001. At UAMS, he received the Caduceus Club’s Distinguished Faculty Award in 1996 and the Dean’s Distinguished Faculty Scholar Award in 2007. College of Medicine students recognized him four times with the Red Sash Award.

The ceremony, held in the Diner Learning Center at UAMS’ main Little Rock campus, served as a celebration of the department, with radiology staff, technologists, residents, alumni and faculty members participating. Ferris attended, along with Phillip Kenney, M.D., who served as department chair from 2008-2012. With McDonald, the three men represent more than 40 years of department history.

“Jim is an incredibly important leader on this campus, and hence in this state,” said Richard Turnage, M.D., senior vice chancellor for clinical programs and chief executive officer of UAMS Medical Center. “The department has thrived under his leadership, and we look forward to even greater success for the department and the university. This important honor is incredibly well-deserved, not just because of what you’ve accomplished, but because of the promise for the future.”

McDonald was presented with a commemorative medallion by Gardner and Christopher Westfall, M.D., interim dean of the College of Medicine.

“It goes without saying that receiving the Ernest J. Ferris Chair in Radiology is the highest honor of what’s now a pretty long career, and I’ll be forever grateful,” McDonald said. “Our more than 100 years of history in radiology at UAMS and the contributions of our founders, faculty, residents and alumni constitute a powerful legacy. It’s our privilege now to continue to build on those relationships that have made us so strong as we move into our second century.”

McDonald recognized nearly every person in the room with thanks, from department heads and faculty to technologists, staff and residents. He also thanked his wife, Donna, and his family for their support.

“The Ferris chair is primarily for our residents and their education, and the strengthening of the faculty who have the sacred responsibility to help our residents become radiologists,” McDonald said.

McDonald received his medical degree summa cum laude from the University of Mississippi School of Medicine and completed an internship in surgery and pathology at the Louisiana State University School of Medicine in New Orleans. He completed his residency in diagnostic radiology at the Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology at Washington University in St. Louis, serving as co-chief resident in his final year, and continued his training with a fellowship in nuclear medicine at UAMS and Mallinckrodt.

He joined the College of Medicine full time as an assistant professor and director of the Division of Nuclear Medicine in 2010, and has served as director of the Nuclear Medicine Residency Program since 2013. He served as interim co-vice chair of the department from 2012 to 2014 and was promoted to interim chair in May 2014. He was promoted to associate professor in July 2016 and was named chair in November 2016.

McDonald was a partner in Radiology Associates P.A. in Little Rock from 1983 to 2010, where he served on its governing board, including a term as chair. He was active on the medical staff at St. Vincent Infirmary, now CHI St. Vincent, where he was chief of nuclear medicine from 2003 to 2010 and led a fundraising campaign for nursing education. At Southwest Regional Medical Center, his leadership posts included chief of the Department of Radiology, chief of staff, and chair of the advisory board. He also served as an adjunct clinical assistant professor in the UAMS Department of Radiology from 2003 to 2006.

In addition to leading the Department of Radiology, McDonald has championed implementing imaging decision support algorithms into the Epic electronic medical records system at UAMS and led an effort to ensure appropriate use of mobile chest radiography. He was named both director and medical director of the Imaging Service Line in 2015. Also director of Nuclear Medicine and PET and an expert on the molecular imaging of multiple myeloma, McDonald is a consultant to the UAMS Myeloma Institute. He assists in the integration of quantitative imaging and radiomics into research initiatives for the Department of Biomedical Informatics and chairs the Radiation Safety Committee.

McDonald was named a Fellow of the American College of Radiology in 2016.

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UAMS is the state’s only health sciences university, with colleges of Medicine, Nursing, Pharmacy, Health Professions and Public Health; a graduate school; hospital; northwest Arkansas regional campus; statewide network of regional centers; and seven institutes: the Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute, Jackson T. Stephens Spine & Neurosciences Institute, Myeloma Institute, Harvey & Bernice Jones Eye Institute, Psychiatric Research Institute, Donald W. Reynolds Institute on Aging and Translational Research Institute. It is the only adult Level 1 trauma center in the state. UAMS has 2,834 students, 822 medical residents and six dental residents. It is the state’s largest public employer with more than 10,000 employees, including 1,200 physicians who provide care to patients at UAMS, its regional campuses throughout the state, Arkansas Children’s Hospital, the VA Medical Center and Baptist Health. Visit www.uams.edu or www.uamshealth.com. Find us on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or Instagram.

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By Benjamin Waldrum| April 3rd, 2018 |

Martin G. Radvany, M.D., an internationally known leader in interventional neuroradiology and specialist in vascular disorders of the brain and spine, has joined the Department of Radiology as Professor and Chief of Interventional Neuroradiology.

Dr. Radvany received his medical degree from Northwestern University in Chicago in 1991. He completed a residency in diagnostic radiology at Tripler Army Medical Center in Hawaii and a fellowship in interventional radiology at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. After completing his fellowship, he served for nine years at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, where he was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel and served as Chief of the Interventional Radiology Service.

Dr. Radvany returned to Johns Hopkins in 2007 for a fellowship in interventional neuroradiology and then joined the faculty as an Assistant Professor of Radiology, Neurological Surgery and Neurology. He served as Chief of Interventional Neuroradiology at the Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center and Director of the Interventional Neuroradiology Fellowship in the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Dr. Radvany worked with teams of internationally known specialists developing endovascular techniques and medical devices for the treatment of brain aneurysms, stroke, vascular malformations and pseudotumor cerebri syndrome.

In 2015 he was recruited to York, Pennsylvania, to establish the Interventional Neuroradiology Program at WellSpan hospital, which received designation as a JCAHO-certified Comprehensive Stroke Center within three years.

Dr. Radvany has contributed chapters to more than 15 textbooks on endovascular treatment of neurovascular disorders and published over 50 articles in medical journals. He is a reviewer for several medical journals and has lectured internationally.

Jill Mhyre, M.D., Director of Obstetric Anesthesia and Vice Chair for Research in the Department of Anesthesiology, has been appointed to serve as Chair of Anesthesiology effective July 1.

Dr. Mhyre will succeed W. Brooks Gentry, M.D., who has decided to step down in order to focus more of his time on research and academic mentorship. The transition will enable Dr. Gentry to focus more closely on his role as Principal Investigator on the ground-breaking, National Institute on Drug Abuse-funded clinical studies for the anti-methamphetamine medications he has been working with colleagues to develop. In addition, Dr. Gentry will remain a member of the clinical faculty at UAMS, facilitate research education for departmental faculty, fellows and residents, and develop greater research collaborations for the department via work with the UAMS Translational Research Institute.

“Dr. Mhyre is known internationally for her work to improve the safety of obstetric patients,” Interim Dean Christopher Westfall, M.D., said in his March 14 announcement to the faculty. “She is a proven academic physician and leader who will advance all missions of the College of Medicine and UAMS. She will be a tremendous addition to our leadership.”

Dr. Mhyre was recruited to UAMS as an Associate Professor in 2013. She has served as Director of Obstetric Anesthesia since 2014 and as Vice Chair for Research since 2015. In 2016 she was invested as the inaugural Dola S. Thompson, M.D., Professor of Anesthesiology. She is being promoted to the rank of Professor, effective July 1.

Dr. Mhyre received her medical degree at Stanford University in 1999. She interned at Duke University and continued her training at the University of Michigan Health System, where she completed her residency in anesthesiology and research fellowships in the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program and the National Institutes of Health’s Building Interdisciplinary Research Careers in Women’s Health Program.

She joined the faculty at the University of Michigan Health System, serving as Director of Obstetric Anesthesiology Research from 2006 to 2013 and as Director of Quality Improvement for Anesthesiology in 2012-2013.

Dr. Mhyre’s research focuses on maternal patient safety with specific areas of interest in maternal mortality, severe obstetric morbidity, perioperative and peripartum cardiopulmonary resuscitation, regionalization of peripartum care for women with significant co-existing disease, and systems solutions to improve communication and safety on labor and delivery units.

She is the Executive Section Editor for Obstetric Anesthesia for Analgesia & Anesthesia, Editor of the International Journal of Obstetric Anesthesia, and Associate Editor of Chestnut’s Obstetric Anesthesia Principles and Practice. Earlier roles included Chair of the Society for Obstetric Anesthesia and Perinatology Patient Safety Committee, Chair of the National Partnership for Maternal Safety Subcommittee on Vital Sign Triggers, and the journal liaison for the Society of Obstetric Anesthesia and Perinatology.

Maria Almeida, Ph.D., is the first researcher at UAMS to receive supplemental funding through the NIAMS STAR program and hopes it will not only take her work to the next level but show other investigators a roadmap for their careers.

Almeida, an associate professor in the Department of Internal Medicine-Endocrinology in the UAMS College of Medicine, has spent the last 16 years studying the basic mechanisms of bone growth and skeletal aging.

With the $300,000 supplement from the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases’ Supplements to Advance Research program, she hopes to springboard her laboratory findings into a pilot drug that she will test for its potential use in bone diseases like osteoporosis.

“They use the phrase ‘from projects to programs,’” Almeida said. “It will allow the opening of new possibilities within my lab. I will be able to take my work beyond one area of focus, and I will be able to be a little more creative with my approach. Most of my work has been in basic science, and this will allow me to be more translational – taking the basic science closer to potential treatments.”

Since its first cycle in 2015, the NIAMS STAR program has awarded only three to five investigators per year. Awardee institutions have included Harvard Medical School, the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Duke University and Stanford University.

One of the perimeters of NIAMS STAR is that it looks to fund what it terms “high-risk ideas.” The thinking is that with high risk also comes the potential for high reward in terms of advances in medicine and impact on human health. In recent years, the National Institutes of Health has been looking for new ways to fund such research.

“Traditional NIH funding programs have certainly led to advances in human health, but there has always been speculation that promising discoveries can take too long to emerge from the lab to become treatments or diagnostics,” said Lawrence E. Cornett, Ph.D., vice chancellor for research at UAMS. “The idea behind NIAMS STAR and similar programs is to give investigators additional resources to pursue these high-risk, high-reward lines of research that have the potential to produce breakthroughs that can rapidly advance a field. Dr. Almeida is a talented investigator whose work has the potential to do just that.”

The STAR program also targets researchers like Almeida because they are at a vulnerable point in their careers. They have had early success with a scientific pursuit but may be running out of traditional funding options. Without funding, they might abandon even promising research for other pursuits.

Instead, NIAMS is looking to help these early- to mid-career scientists – or “early-established investigators (EEIs),” as they call them.

While announcing the program in 2014, NIAMS Director Stephen I. Katz, M.D., Ph.D., said that by not adequately supporting these EEIs, what is truly at stake is the loss of innovative advancements to human health and the underdevelopment of the next generation of scientists.

“The goal of the program … is to promote innovation and exploration of new research directions,” Katz said in the announcement. “Ultimately, we believe that the awards will assist EEIs in making the transition from work on a single research project to leadership of a comprehensive research program.”

Almeida received her first NIH Research Project Grant Program (R01) award in 2010. Through extensive research in her lab, she found that the interaction between the cellular-level functions of two proteins involved in gene transcription – forkhead box O and β-catenin – can decrease bone mass.

“We were lucky enough to get great results, which were published in high-impact journals,” Almeida said. “I was able to have the R01 renewed in 2016. Renewing an R01 is not very common and suggests the promising nature of the research. This supplemental funding will allow me to develop a pilot drug out of the principals we discovered, which I can then test to see if it behaves like we expect it to.”

The supplemental funding also opens up the project for collaboration with Kottayil Varughese, Ph.D., a professor in the College of Medicine’s Department of Physiology and Biophysics. Almeida’s lab and Varughese’s lab together will attempt to develop specific cell-penetrating peptides that will block or disrupt the interaction between forkhead box O and β-catenin in order to stimulate bone formation.

The work begins in April 2018.

Almeida notes that there was a small window when she was eligible for the program. At NIAMS, they are focusing on supporting this specific group of promising mid-career scientists, but at other institutes, there are new programs aimed at better supporting senior scientists who are well established or new ones just beginning their careers.

“Funding is critical,” Almeida said. “We all have to keep our eyes open for these new opportunities.”

By Amy Widner| March 28th, 2018 |

The Arkansas Business Publishing Group honored two College of Medicine faculty members this week.  The awards recognize individuals, companies and organizations that are making a significant impact on the quality of health care in Arkansas.

Ron Robertson, M.D., of the Division of Trauma, Critical Care and Acute Surgery in the Department of Surgery, received the Physician of the Year award. Read more at the Arkansas Business website.

Paul J. Wendel, M.D., professor in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, was awarded the Women’s Health and Wellness Hero award. Read more at the Arkansas Business Website.

Kent C. Westbrook, M.D., Distinguished Professor in the Department of Surgery in the College of Medicine at UAMS, has received the Arkansas Business Healthcare Heroes Lifetime Achievement Award.

Get more information in the article on the Arkansas Business website.

The first memory David Scott has following his traffic accident July 31, 2017, is a paramedic leaning over trying to help release him from underneath his 18-wheeler.

“I’m trying to pull my arm out and they’re telling me I can’t,” Scott said. “So I turn around and try and force it. But they stopped me.”

That’s because at that moment, Scott wasn’t fully aware how badly his arm had been damaged. When he arrived at UAMS, his surgeons were not able to save it. And not just the arm, they and had to amputate up to his chest.

“Typically if an extremity is reconstructable, we will reconstruct it,” said Mark Tait, M.D., an orthopaedic hand and upper extremity surgeon and assistant professor in the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery. “In this case, his nerves, arteries and vessels were so severely damaged we had to do an amputation.”

But Tait and John Bracey, M.D., another UAMS orthopaedic hand and upper extremity surgeon, were thinking beyond the loss of Scott’s arm. They had plans for his future.

Traditionally, Tait said, patients can receive body-powered prosthetics. But new technology allows advanced robotics to be used by amputees. Because the surgeons decided to prepare Scott to be able to use a robotic arm, the surgery took about seven hours.

Tait and Bracey identified the nerves that once flowed in his hand, wrist and elbow. They then took those nerves and plugged them into other muscles in Scott’s chest. With time, the nerve would reinnervate – supply energy to – that muscle, causing it to have a new function. So now when Scott thinks, “close hand” or “bend elbow” new muscles, operated by nerves formally in his arm, respond. That response is sensed by his robotic arm, which follows the brain’s command.

“David is very highly motivated,” Bracey said. “He understood the severity of his injury but was determined not to be limited by that. His motivation helps make this so successful.”

UAMS is one of a few institutions in the nation able to do these kinds of surgeries and Scott is among the first here in the state to receive a robotic arm. Tait and Bracey say they’re happy to bring this option to amputees in Arkansas and the region. This procedure is also remarkable, the surgeons said, because it is intuitive. With more time and practice, a patient is able to fine-tune the way the robotic arm works with his or her body. He says they’re still working on improving the functionality.

“I told my wife, I’m not going to let this get me down,” Scott said.

And he hasn’t. His doctors expected it to take six months for him to make the progress he has made since having the arm. It’s taken him only three and each day he gets a little more control. He’s able to put the arm on and take it off with little to no help and has been very active in his church and his softball team.

“It’s amazing the things doctors have been able to come up with in medicine,” Scott said. “I’m happy to be alive and plan to make the most of my life.”

Tait and Bracey say even those who have already had an amputation could be eligible for robotic technology. Because the nerves are likely still there, they would still be able to identify them and plug them into different targets.

“It can be a good option for those even 10 years past their amputation,” Bracey said.

By Katrina Dupins| March 26th, 2018 |

James D. Marsh, M.D. – chairman of the Department of Internal Medicine in the College of Medicine at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) – has been honored by the American Heart Association for his three-decade career fighting cardiovascular disease and stroke.

Marsh received the Worthen-Cornett Award on March 10 at the Little Rock Heart Ball at the Statehouse Convention Center.

Named in memory of the philanthropy and dedication shown by the late George Worthen and the late James K. Cornett, M.D., the Worthen-Cornett Awarded is presented to an individual each year at the Heart Ball for excellence in volunteerism. Recipients demonstrate an outstanding commitment to working with the American Heart Association’s mission to build healthier lives, free of cardiovascular diseases and stroke.

Marsh has received numerous grants from the American Heart Association for a total of more than $500,000 during his career. It has funded research into using gene therapy to improve the function of a failing heart, stroke prevention and other topics.

“I am proud to receive this recognition,” Marsh said. “AHA research funding has touched the lives of every heart and stroke patient treated in the United States, no matter if the hospital is a research institution or not. This research has led to gold standard treatments and guidelines used by health care providers in every corner of the nation and around the world. Not only does every heart and stroke patient benefit from our research, but so do the millions of people who want to live healthier lives and prevent these diseases from every happening.

“My family, like the majority of families in Arkansas, has been affected by heart disease and stroke, with lives disrupted or ending too soon,” Marsh said. “It is a privilege to commit my career to developing preventive measures and new treatments for cardiovascular disease, and to caring for patients who are already bearing the burden of heart disease and stroke.”

A nationally prominent internist, cardiologist and cardiology researcher, Marsh served on the faculties at Harvard Medical School and Wayne State University before being recruited to UAMS in 2004 where he is also the Nolan Professor.

Marsh received his medical degree from Harvard Medical School in 1974. He trained in internal medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, where he went on to complete clinical and research fellowships in cardiovascular diseases. He served on the faculty at Harvard for 13 years while also directing the cardiology fellowship program at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. In 1993 he moved to Wayne State University in Detroit, where he later was appointed director of cardiology and in 2001 became associate chair of the Department of Internal Medicine.

By Amy Widner| March 26th, 2018|