When Todd Maxson, M.D., worked to implement a trauma system for the state of Arkansas in 2009, he didn’t know that his own life would be among the many saved.

“It’s certainly different being on the opposite end of care,” Maxson said.

On Sept. 1, Maxson, a professor of surgery in the UAMS College of Medicine left Arkansas Children’s Hospital on his motorcycle after a long day in the operating room. Maxson is chief of pediatric trauma surgery and was on call.

A car hit him on Woodrow Street, minutes away from Children’s Hospital. Maxson flew off the bike, breaking his helmet. The vehicle dragged his motorcycle 150 feet. Fortunately, two bystanders stopped to help. One of them called 911. The other, at Maxson’s request, called Children’s Hospital. His work and his patients remained a priority even as he lie in the street with life-threatening injuries.

“As a trauma surgeon on call, my responsibility is for emergencies at the hospital,” Maxson said. “We can’t leave that uncovered for even a second.”

Maxson said Metropolitan Emergency Medical Services were quick to the scene and some of the EMS professionals recognized him from training.

“I may have provided a couple of suggestions,” Maxson said with a chuckle. “It’s in my nature. But they smiled and took care of me. They did everything right.”

That included transporting him to UAMS — the state’s only adult level one trauma center. Anna Privratsky, D.O., in the UAMS Department of Surgery, was in the Emergency Department that night. She says it had been relatively quiet when the trauma call came in.

“I saw it was a motorcycle accident. Minutes later the chief resident told me it was Dr. Maxson,” Privratsky said. “As a trauma surgeon, there’s not a lot that can shake you. But when someone you know comes in for trauma, that’ll do it.”

Privratsky, a former UAMS resident who worked under Maxson, says her training prepared her for even the most stressful situations.

“We all know Dr. Maxson. But when something like this happens you must tuck aside everything except focusing on getting him better. We do that for everyone who rolls through the doors.”

As a level one trauma center, UAMS had access to interventional radiologists who worked to stop the bleeding within an hour. Orthopeadic surgeons were immediately available. Maxson had a shattered pelvis, a shattered right femur, lots of bruises and significant blood loss. He had four major operations in four days.

“Doing the major surgeries together prevents complications,” Maxson said.

Maxson left the hospital two weeks later. He’ll have to keep weight off his legs before a few more surgeries. Then he’ll begin physical and occupational therapy. He hopes to be back to work summer 2018.

“I’m coming back,” Maxson said. “I’m absolutely coming back. And I’ll be a better surgeon after this. I now have a level of empathy that I couldn’t have gained before this.”

Before 2009, Arkansas had the highest injury-related mortality rates in the country. After the trauma system was established, the state saw a 50 percent reduction in preventable deaths.

“The gift given by the Legislature in the form of a trauma system has paid unbelievable dividends,” Maxson said. “Had that system not been in place, I think I would’ve died. And if I lived, I wouldn’t be in the shape I am today. The investment has a positive return.”

By Katrina Dupins | October 3rd, 2017

Oct. 4, 2017 | By being effective advocates for science funding, researchers can help the U.S. lead the world in science and help their own careers, UAMS students and faculty were told at a recent lecture.

“The public does not understand what we do and they don’t understand why we do it,” said Richard L. Eckert, Ph.D., from the University of Maryland, School of Medicine, where he is a professor and chair of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.

The Sept. 27 lecture was sponsored by the Office of Interprofessional Education and the College of Medicine Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.

Knowing how to talk to nonscientists about the importance of research is an important skill for researchers, Eckert said.  “Leave out the calcium concentrations. Tell the big picture.”

Whether talking to family or friends at a party, the importance of science and the threats to funding must be communicated clearly.

He noted that the U.S. share of worldwide research and development has fallen in recent years from 35 to 27 percent, while Asia’s share has climbed from 27 to 40 percent.

The good news is that Congress has started to increase funding for research, but current funding levels for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) remain below 2003 levels in inflation-adjusted dollars.

Funding stability is especially critical in science, he said, because a sudden cut in funding such as occurred in 2013 can sabotage years invested in science programs.

“This will be very important to your careers because you’re going to be funded by the federal government to do research, and you’ll want to pursue your work,” Eckert said.  “Very few Americans know what the NIH is, and that’s why you have to make an effort to tell them.”

Eckert leads delegations of researchers to Capitol Hill in Washington D.C. to speak directly to members of the House and Senate.

“In the years to come you’re going to have to increasingly engage with this kind of activity because lots of people are asking for support from government and sometimes budgets are limited so we have to be there and we have to lobby with our congressmen and senators to do things that are in the interest of science progression,” he said.

At UAMS, such outreach is led by Maurice Rigsby, J.D., vice chancellor for Institutional Relations.

By David Robinson | October 4th, 2017

Oct. 3, 2017 | It’s a subject that Germaine Odenheimer, M.D., finds harder to talk about to patients than having a terminal illness: impaired driving, and that’s what she wanted to speak about to the audience at the 18^th annual Geriatric Update and Long-term Care Conference held at UAMS.

“One of the reasons I got interested in this area is because I found this topic of driving was the most difficult topic I have to deal with,” Odenheimer said recently to a conference audience. “It was harder than telling them they have Alzheimer’s disease and even harder than telling them they were going to die. There’s something about this topic that is so powerful. I felt I needed to learn more about it and how to deal with this issue. It became the focus of my research interest.”

Odenheimer, an associate professor in the Donald W. Reynolds Department of Geriatric Medicine at the University of Oklahoma’s College of Medicine, was a guest speaker at the conference held from Sept. 21-23 at the UAMS Donald W. Reynolds Institute on Aging.

Throughout the three days, speakers, presentations and expert panels covered a range of topics from trauma in the elderly, infection control and food disparities to legal and social issues in geriatric care. More than 120 people attended the conference, which was sponsored by the Arkansas Geriatric Education Collaborative at UAMS.

The conference has been supported annually by Jeanne Wei, M.D., Ph.D., executive director of the Reynolds Institute, to provide the latest information to physicians and other health professionals, as well as caregivers to the aging population.

“The updates are giving important and practical information to professionals directly involved in senior care,” Wei said. “Update speakers aren’t presenting abstract concepts. They’re communicating the latest findings and best practices. Feedback over the years has shown the tremendous value our attendees find in the information communicated at the update. Dr. Germaine Odenheimer’s presentation is a great example of that.”

Odenheimer said as young drivers mature, they progress from being high-risk drivers with a high fatal crash rate to lower-risk experienced drivers through early and middle adulthood. Drawing further on vehicle collision data, she said the crash rate doesn’t increase again until age 75 when it starts slowly and steadily rises again. At 85 and older, it exceeds the fatal crash risk for teenagers.

In almost every state, the driver is held responsible for accidents that occur when driving is impaired. But several years ago, the American Medical Association determined that physicians need to play a role in deciding when a patient is fit to drive or not and even have an ethical obligation to do so, Odenheimer said.

Odenheimer said a physician can refer the patient to an occupational therapist for evaluation. In some cases, a change in medication, treating an underlying condition that is contributing or causing the impairment or limiting the patient’s driving can be enough to resolve the impairment or reduce the risk.

“Most people wait until there is a crisis,” she said. “The time to start that conversation is early. If they have a diagnosis that is likely to lead to loss of driving, like dementia or Parkinson’s or other similar conditions, then you need to have that conversation early. It’s much easier to start the conversation before they have to stop.”

Following Odenheimer’s presentation, she also took part in a four-person panel discussion on the topic that included Little Rock District Court Judge Vic Fleming, who oversees a traffic court; Lou Ann Eads, M.D., a geriatric psychiatrist at the UAMS Psychiatric Research Institute; and Masil George, M.D., a geriatrician and pain management specialist at the Reynolds Institute.

As part of the panel, Fleming reviewed the legal processes that can be used to determine whether or not someone’s driving is impaired and unsafe.

He said he too had to work through the issue with a family relative, who passed a driving test and then had three car accidents in two years.

“If your loved one has an offense pending in front of a traffic judge, and you know that, by golly, just go with them,” Fleming said. “We judges get it. If the defendant is in his or her nineties and there are a couple of people with them who are in their forties or fifties, then it’s usually a niece or nephew, son or daughter who wants to make a comment to get a license revoked. We’ll listen.”

In dialogue with members of the audience, the panel engaged in an in-depth discussion of the role physicians play in helping patients and families wrestle with the issue of impaired driving.

Eleven geriatrics research posters also were on display at the conference. A number attended from out of state, including some who have participated for as many as 13 consecutive years.

By Ben Boulden | October 3rd, 2017

Oct. 2, 2017 | Stavros Manolagas, M.D., Ph.D., who holds several roles at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) and the Central Arkansas Veterans Healthcare System, received the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research’s oldest and most prestigious honor – the William F. Neuman Award – at the ASBMR’s annual meeting, Sept. 8-11 in Denver.

The Neuman Award honors an ASBMR member for outstanding and major scientific contributions in the area of bone and mineral research and for contributions to associates and trainees in training, research and administration.

“Art is I. Science is we,” Manolagas said during his acceptance speech. “The Neuman award is, at least as much, a recognition of a team as it is of the individual awardee. The most important job of the leader is to find and hire people who are smarter than she or he. By that measure, I believe that I succeeded with each one of my current and former UAMS co-workers with whom I had the joy to work with. To all of them, I am indebted for sharing their talents and scientific journeys.”

Manolagas also delivered the Louis V. Avioli Lecture during the meeting, the only invited plenary lecture presented by an ASBMR member at the annual conference, which draws as many as 4,000 physicians, scientists and other participants from around the world. This was the first time since the ASBMR’s founding 40 years ago that the Neuman Award and Avioli Lecture went to the same individual.

Manolagas is a distinguished professor of medicine, professor of orthopaedics and director of the Division of Endocrinology and Metabolism in the Department of Internal Medicine in the UAMS College of Medicine. He is director of the UAMS and Central Arkansas Veterans Healthcare System Center for Osteoporosis and Metabolic Bone Diseases – one of the largest and longest-funded osteoporosis research centers in the world.

In his lecture, Manolagas discussed the dramatic progress that has been made in understanding bone biology and the underlying mechanisms of osteoporosis over the past 40 years. He traced the advancement of pharmaceutical drugs for osteoporosis, as well as the work that remains to be done to develop therapies that continue to be both effective and safe with long-term use.

“The overarching cause of osteoporosis is aging, and bone-intrinsic mechanisms are the primary culprits of the disease in both women and men,” Manolagas said. “Bone-extrinsic mechanisms such as menopause are only contributory. Several new classes of drugs targeting age-related mechanisms have shown the potential to treat more than one age-related disease, including osteoporosis, simultaneously. The future of research and patient care in this area is bright.”

Manolagas also serves as vice chair for research and holds the Thomas E. Andreoli, M.D., M.A.C.P. Clinical Scholar Chair in the Department of Internal Medicine at UAMS. In addition, Manolagas is chief of the Endocrinology Section in the Central Arkansas Veterans Healthcare System.

His scholarly contributions have been recognized over the years with induction to the Association of American Physicians in 1996; the AlliedSignal award for research on aging in 1999; the inaugural Louis V. Avioli Award of ASBMR, 2000; a Doctor Honoris Causa from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece, 2007; the International Bone and Mineral Society (IBMS) D. Harold Copp award, 2013; and the William S. Middleton Award of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) for achieving international acclaim for research accomplishments in areas of prime importance to VA’s research mission, 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; a hospital; a northwest Arkansas regional campus; a statewide network of regional centers; and seven institutes: the Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute, the Jackson T. Stephens Spine & Neurosciences Institute, the Myeloma Institute, the Harvey & Bernice Jones Eye Institute, the Psychiatric Research Institute, the Donald W. Reynolds Institute on Aging and the Translational Research Institute. It is the only adult Level 1 trauma center in the state. UAMS has 2,870 students, 799 medical residents and five dental residents. It is the state’s largest public employer with more than 10,000 employees, including about 1,200 physicians who provide care to patients at UAMS and 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 Amy Widner | October 2nd, 2017

Sept. 28, 2017 | To be accepting of one another and work to unify the country, individuals must better understand their privileges and identify ways to help others, said Sara Tariq, M.D., assistant dean for undergraduate clinical education in the UAMS College of Medicine.

The interactive, lunchtime talk Sept. 20 was the third in a series of events sponsored by the UAMS Center for Diversity Affairs to celebrate UAMS Diversity Month.

Privilege is a set of unearned benefits afforded to a group of people, often inherently, that can include financial status, race, property, freedom, education and culture, said Tariq. Privilege can come with many negative connotations, said Tariq; however, having privilege is not an insult or accusation.

“Privilege doesn’t mean you have lived a life free of suffering or free of challenges,” she said. “It doesn’t infer you’re a bad or selfish person and it doesn’t denote you didn’t work hard to get where you are, nor does it mean you’re a racist.”

The important step is to recognize privilege. To emphasize the point, Tariq quoted Peggy McIntosh, a well-known professor at Wellesley College in Massachusetts who said failing to reckon with privilege means settling for a partial view of reality.

Still quoting McIntosh, Tariq said to identify privilege, individuals must be able to see patterns and systems throughout social life and also care about others’ individual experiences.

“Oftentimes, we feel unheard and that’s part of the problem when it comes to the discussion of privilege,” said Tariq. “It’s making ourselves stand back and make sure we’re listening to what the other person is saying.”

Tariq invited the audience to take part in a 20-question survey to help better identify its individual advantages. The questions ranged from marriage equality, discrimination, the recognition of religious holidays and the representation of the individual’s race, nationality and religion within society.

Following the exercise, Tariq encouraged the audience to find ways to help others, whether it’s by advocating for a specific cause or finding simple ways in daily life to be hospitable.

“It can be as simple as smiling and greeting someone,” said Tariq. “That might be enough to create a little bit of safety for that person in that space. It’s important to be an ally.”

By Lee Hogan | September 28th, 2017

Sept. 26, 2017 | A University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) research scientist has been awarded a $409,750 grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse to lead a study investigating ways the brain develops resilience to mental illnesses like addiction.

Andrew James, Ph.D., an associate professor in the UAMS College of Medicine’s Department of Psychiatry, is the principal investigator in the two-year study, which will use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine patterns of brain organization in adult subjects who experienced childhood trauma.

James and his research team will conduct a series of cognitive tests on the subjects while they undergo an MRI scan in an attempt to determine the different ways males and females adapt to traumatic experiences.

The study is a follow-up to research initiated in 2014 by James and Clint Kilts, Ph.D., director of the Brain Imaging Research Center, which demonstrated how childhood trauma may lead to addiction.

“We know from our previous research that adults who experienced childhood trauma and didn’t become addicted to drugs or alcohol had a unique brain organization compared to those who did become addicted,” said James. “We hope this study will help us determine the role gender plays in these trauma outcomes.”

James’ study will also involve subjects from a previous research trial pertaining to trauma and adolescent girls. James will be following up with former participants to determine the long-term effects of trauma.

“We’re going to be studying 40 girls with varying trauma histories. They were 12 to 16 years of age when they first participated in our research study,” said James, who will be testing the subjects’ motor skills and attention control in the MRI scanner and comparing their results to earlier data. “We’re interested in whether or not they developed an addiction to drugs. Were their brains born resilient or did they learn resilience?”

For information about the study, contact the Brain Imaging Research Center at (501) 420-2653.

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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; a hospital; a northwest Arkansas regional campus; a statewide network of regional centers; and seven institutes: the Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute, the Jackson T. Stephens Spine & Neurosciences Institute, the Myeloma Institute, the Harvey & Bernice Jones Eye Institute, the Psychiatric Research Institute, the Donald W. Reynolds Institute on Aging and the Translational Research Institute. It is the only adult Level 1 trauma center in the state. UAMS has 2,870 students, 799 medical residents and five dental residents. It is the state’s largest public employer with more than 10,000 employees, including about 1,200 physicians who provide care to patients at UAMS and 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 Amy Widner | September 26th, 2017