In the News

Spring 2016

(November 2016) Reporters locally and nationally turn to the School of Medicine for expertise and research news. Here are examples from near and far.

Stephen Daniels, MD, PhD, chair of pediatrics, told the Caledonian Record of St. Johnsbury, Vt., in August that physical activity for schoolchildren is important. “Effective physical education programs positively impact kids’ physical, mental, and emotional health. Beyond reducing obesity risk, adequate physical activity during the day improves judgment, reduces stress, and can increase self-esteem.”

Maria Nagel, MD, associate professor of neurology, in August paid tribute to Donald Gilden, MD, former chair of neurology in his obituary in the Denver Post. “Don was a wonderful mentor. He had an ability to identify projects that would ultimately improve human health, bring collaborators together and successfully drive the science forward.”

Katie Dorris, MD, assistant professor of pediatrics and a neurooncologist at Children’s Hospital Colorado described families seeking to treat children with medical marijuana in an August article in the Tampa Bay Times: “A lot of the families are frustrated because they don’t have the time to wait. When they’re faced with a terminal diagnosis, they feel like they have to consider everything.”

Karen Wilson, MD, associate professor of pediatrics, commented to Colorado Public Radio in May about a study that found one in six children hospitalized in Colorado for inflammation of the lungs tested positive for exposure to marijuana. “I think that we need to pay more attention to the impact of that second-hand smoke, not only on children, but also on people who are living in adjacent apartments to somebody who may be smoking marijuana.”

John J. Reilly, Jr., MD, dean of the School of Medicine, explained the importance of the “white coat ceremony,” which welcomes new medical students to campus in an August report on Denver’s NBC affiliate, 9News, “It is a symbol of the special status you have as a physician, and therefore the special responsibility you have as a physician, to listen to your patients, to advocate for them, to help them make tough decisions.”

John Rumsfeld, MD, PhD, professor of medicine and the chief innovation officer for the American College of Cardiology, was interviewed by Colorado Public Radio in August about the shortfall in treating patients for depression after heart surgery. “First of all, it’s the way we’re trained in medicine,” he said. “There are highly skilled psychiatrists and psychologists in Colorado and in the United States of course, but they go through a different pathway of training right out of medical school than do surgeons and cardiologists and primary care physicians.”

Ken Tyler, MD, chair of neurology, discussed the risk of the Zika virus spreading in the United States in a report that aired in May on the Denver NBC affiliate, 9News. “The more people you have going to and coming back from areas where there’s infection,” he said “the more likelihood you have of establishing disease in the United States.”

Andrea Hoopes, MD, MPH, assistant professor of pediatrics was quoted in the Los Angeles Times in June in an article about birth control: “IUDs and implants are superior at preventing pregnancy across all age groups. So it’s para-mount that we become creative in offering all forms of birth control though many outlets.”

In a report aired in August on the NBC affiliate, NBC26, in Green Bay, Wis., Amy Brooks-Kayal, MD, professor of pediatrics and chief of pediatric neurology at Children’s Hospital Colorado, said: “It’s really important for the entire medical community to establish if marijuana products are effective. If so, for whom are they effective? How are they best utilized and at what dose?”

Ross Camidge, MD, PhD, professor of medicine, told 9News, the NBC affiliate in Denver, in May that personalized medical treatments are tailored to the patient: “In our clinical trials, we’re not trying to find a ‘one size fits all. We’re trying to find something like Cinderella’s shoe that will fit perfectly on that one person. You have to personalize the treatment.”

Angela Sauaia, MD, PhD, professor of medicine and surgery, and Ernest Moore, MD, vice chair of trauma and crucial care research in the Department of Surgery, were each quoted in a June report on CNN about their study on wounds caused by firearms. “The handguns people use now have more of an ability to create severe tissue injury than the typical .38 Special injuries we used to see 15 or 20 years ago,” Moore said. “And if you have weapons that deliver a multitude of bullets, allowing the shooter to continue shooting, (that) is far more damaging than the amount of energy delivered by a single bullet.”

Stacy Fischer, MD, associate professor of medicine who specializes in geriatrics, explained to the Washington Post in June the findings from a study she and Dan Matlock, MD, associate professor of medicine, conducted on medical treatment received by physicians at their time of death: “We went into this with the hypothesis we were going to see very large differences. What we found was very little difference to no difference.”

Benjamin Miller, PsyD, director of the Eugene S. Farley, Jr., Health Policy Center at the CU School of Medicine, talked in June with NBA.com about mental health. “The NBA, in my mind, is just like any other employer,” he said. “If we think about how employers are responsible for their employees, employers buy benefits packages for their employees.”

David Olds, PhD, professor of pediatrics and founder of the Nurse-Family Partnership, told Bloomberg News in June that intervening to help mothers in poverty can improve the lives of children. “If the mother is living in a household where she is essentially homeless, and she’s there couch-surfing with a newborn baby, her ability to protect that child is really limited.”

“For performance, low-carb diets do not work,” Iñigo San Millán, PhD, director of the exercise physiology lab at the CU Sports Medicine and Performance Center and assistant professor of physical medicine and rehabilitation, said in a report in July in Men’s Journal magazine. “We have more and more people coming in eating low-carb, and their performance is horrible. Restore their diets to normal and things improve.”

Genie E. Roosevelt, MD, MPH/MSPH, an associate professor of emergency medicine at the CU School of Medicine, discussed with The New York Times a study she and G. Sam Wang, MD, wrote for JAMA Pediatrics. When voters decided in 2012 to legalize marijuana for recreational use, researchers anticipated that rates of accidental exposure in children would rise. “But we were not prepared for the dramatic increase,” she said in the July article.

Sarah Rowan, MD, instructor of medicine and associate director of HIV and viral hepatitis prevention at Denver Public Health, commented in July in the Denver Post on the lack of coverage of breakthrough treatment for hepatitis C for some Medicaid patients: “It’s very difficult to see patients week after week who are seeking treatment… have it be denied. We’d really like to be able to treat everyone and to make a dent in this public health problem.”

Kelly Bookman, MD, associate professor of emergency medicine and medical director of the emergency department at the University of Colorado Hospital, described the transformation of the emergency department at the University of Colorado Hospital in The Wall Street Journal in August: “We’ve reimagined the way that patients are triaged.”

Andrew Monte, MD, associate professor of emergency medicine, in July explained to KLAS-TV of Las Vegas the most common types of complaints related to marijuana from patients. “The edible agents are actually a little bit more unpredictable in the clinical effects that they have, and so people have more psychiatric complaints, more anxiety, actually have hallucinations and things like that.”

Elizabeth Pomfret, MD, PhD, professor of surgery and chief of the division of transplant surgery, in September discussed the decision of a Steamboat Springs Middle School teacher to donate a kidney to a former student. “The self-sacrifice and gift of living donation from heroes like Tracy benefit all patients waiting for a kidney transplant,” she said in Steamboat Today, a publication in Steamboat Springs, Colo. “Her gift to Henry allows another patient on the waiting list who does not have a living donor to be transplanted, in addition to saving Henry’s life. Living donation represents the very best of mankind.”