Neurocritical Care News

This week’s “spotlight” interview shines on Safa Kaleem, a rising fourth-year medical student at the Duke University School of Medicine, as well as a recent graduate of the School’s Clinical Research Training Program. Kaleem talks to us about her master’s project, where she helped validate quantitative EEG, a tool that offers great promise in improving diagnosis and treatment for patients with nonconvulsive seizures.

James Camp, MSN, likes to think of himself as the Moriarty of Duke University Hospital’s neuro Intensive Care Unit (ICU), where he works behind the scenes, plotting ways to improve safety, innovation, and daily operations across the unit. For this week’s spotlight interview, the nurse manager talks to us about how he works to handle the information deluge of the COVID-19 pandemic, his joys of patient care and maintaining spreadsheets, and what he wishes more patients knew about visiting the neuro ICU.

Members of the Duke Neurology Department continued to advance the fields of clinical and translational neuroscience this April. Our faculty contributed to the first major systematic review of self-management programs for epilepsy, helping to answer questions about what makes these programs more or less effective. Another article discussed the benefits of CN-105, a therapeutic agent that may help reduce the harmful neuro-inflammatory response associated with stroke, traumatic brain injury, and other conditions.

[Update: The initial round of lunches from NaanStop has since inspired a series of more than 20 lunch donations for the Neuro ICU team, courtesy of the Duke Neurology Department.]

Duke University Hospital’s Neuro Intensive Care Unit received a welcome surprise this Friday--35 box lunches of northern Indian cuisine, donated courtesy of NaanStop, a nearby Indian restaurant.

Before the COVID-19 epidemic, Viviana Cantillana managed the laboratory of Daniel Laskowitz, MD, MHS, in its home in the Bryan Research Building. Now, with her lab microscope in her living room, she’s performing stereology analysis on more than 200 samples of mouse brains from her own home. Cantillana talks to use about her work and how it has changed since the outbreak, how things have changed since she started at Duke nearly 20 years ago, and how she enjoys her spare time in isolation.

What do a genetic analysis of the intersecting pathways between Alzheimer’s disease and depression, a national prize-winning essay examining the ethics of unionization for physicians, and a systematic review of the literature surrounding a new potential form of therapy for stroke recovery have in common? They’re all subjects of peer-reviewed journal articles written or co-written by members of the Neurology Department published this March.

This week’s Spotlight interview shines on self-described “triple threat” Daniel Laskowitz, MD, MHS. Laskowitz talks to us about his work in the Brain Injury Translational Center, offers some advice for younger faculty with interests in education, research, and clinical care, and shares his hopes of learning to ride a motorcycle and play the guitar when he’s not at Duke.