News

Members of the Duke Neurology Department shared their advances and insights in neurology education, health disparities, movement disorders, and other areas at the American Academy of Neurology’s (AAN) 75th annual meeting in Boston this week. This year, our faculty, staff, and trainees contributed more to the AAN than in any previous year, contributing to 20 posters and abstracts and six classes or sessions.

Matthew Ehrlich, MD, MPH, got his first exposure to hospital neurology seven years ago as a vascular neurology fellow. He came to love the complexity and variety of cases during that rotation and joined the division after completing his fellowship. For this week’s Spotlight interview. Ehrlich talks about working as a hospital and vascular neurologist across our three hospitals.

 The shortest month of the year was still an active one for research in the Duke Neurology Department. Our faculty, trainees, and staff members contributed to 10 new peer-reviewed journal articles this February.

The growing specialty of hospital neurology has two hallmarks: complexity and diversity. One minute a hospital neurologist may be helping a cancer patient who is having a seizure; the next, they might be treating a recovering heart attack patient who has just had a stroke. Cases like these are the bread and butter for Hospital Neurology Division Chief Matthew Luedke, MD. In this week’s Faculty Spotlight interview, Luedke talks about the joys and challenges of seeing patients across our hospital system.

The Duke Neurology Department continued to build on its success in the second half of 2022. The final six months of 2022 saw Duke University Hospital receive national rankings for neurology and neurosurgery, our first endowed professorship dedicated to help treat and understand amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), and recognition as the country’s second national center of excellence for dystonia among other achievements.

The Duke Neurology Department continued to grow and advance its missions of patient care, research, and training the next generation of neurology providers in 2022. Highlights from the first half of our calendar year include national and Duke-wide awards recognizing our faculty’s contributions to the field of diversity, inclusion, and neurology as a whole. The same period also saw the growth of the new Duke/UNC Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center and three of our neurologists don helmets and get in their racing care.

Members of the Duke Neurology Department contributed to 12 new peer-reviewed journal articles published this September. Among other findings, this research answered important questions about the use of telehealth to manage chronic neurological conditions, investigated an alternative therapy’s potential benefit for fighting ALS, and synthesized the latest research findings about the role of the immune system and infection in the genesis of Alzheimer’s disease.

U.S. News & World Report ranked Duke University Hospital as the top hospital in North Carolina and the 23rd best across the nation for neurology and neurosurgery in its 2022-2023 hospital rankings. The annual rankings, which assessed more than 4,500 hospitals nationwide, analyze and integrate dozens of medical and surgical services.

William Powers, MD, went to medical school with the intention of being the local doctor of a small New England town. The logical reasoning, intellect, and clinical showmanship of the then-Chair of Neurology Fred Plum got him hooked in neurology, however. Powers hasn't been bored in the five decades since. For this week’s Spotlight interview, Powers talks to us about how neurology has grown as a discipline since he was a resident.