Jason Sink joined the department on April 14, 2008 in the position of Business Operations Manager. In  this role Jason will be responsible for the supervision of the department's administrative support staff and for financial analysis, reporting and business projects. Jason has 14 years of finance and accounting experience and comes to us from the Department of OB/GYN where he has been a Financial Analyst since 2006.  Jason is located in N8E-26 and can be reached at 8-3683.

I am pleased to announce that Thelma Wright, MD, has accepted my offer to become the next Director of our Pain Medicine program. Dr. Wright attended the University of the District of Columbia, received her MD from Howard University College of Medicine and did her anesthesiology residency at the University of Virginia. Her pain fellowship, also performed at the University of Virginia, was completed in 2006. Dr. Wright joined our department in 2006 as an Instructor and was recently promoted to Assistant Professor. She is board certified in Anesthesiology and Pain Management.

Thelma has been the acting Director of the Division for the past year following the departure of Joel Kent. During this time, Dr. Wright has performed admirably. The Pain Division has seen a significant increase in procedures. We recruited three high-quality fellows this past year and expect to have success in recruiting for fellows again this year. Our pain fellowship was reviewed in April by the RRC. Although we do not expect the official results until October, the reviewer was impressed with our program during their visit. We also have added two other pain-trained physicians to our pain group.

Dr. Wright has continued to expand our referral base and worked to improve our visibility in the community. She has ambitious plans for the Division. I am confident under her leadership the Pain Division will thrive, expand the breadth of its clinical services, further develop its reputation for its academic pain specialists and continue the tradition of excellence in education of residents and fellows.

The list is compiled by asking other physicians: "If you or a loved on needed a doctor in your speciality, to whom would you refer them?"

 Read more on the Baltimore Magazine Website.

Richard P. Dutton
University of Maryland
Medical Center
Department of Anesthesiology
R Adams Cowley
Shock Trauma Center
410-328-2628

Timothy B. Gilbert
University of Maryland Medical Center
Department of Anesthesiology
410-328-6120

Andrew M. Malinow
University of Maryland Medical Center
Department of Anesthesiology
410-328-6120

Douglas G. Martz Jr.
University of Maryland Medical Center
Department of Anesthesiology
410-328-6120

Mary Njoku
University of Maryland Medical Center
Department of Anesthesiology
410-328-6120

Anne M. Savarese
University of Maryland
Medical Center
Department of Anesthesiology
410-328-6120

David L. Schreibman
University of Maryland
Medical Center
Department of Anesthesiology
410-328-6120

The University of Maryland Shock Trauma Center, known for state-of-the-art medicine and high-tech advances in patient care, is now teaming with the University of Maryland Center for Integrative Medicine to offer some ancient, low-tech options to help patients manage their pain. These include Reiki (pronounced "ray-kee"), a Japanese energy therapy, and Chinese acupuncture. In addition, the two centers are collaborating on a study looking into the potential benefits of acupuncture for trauma patients.

"Pain management in trauma patients can be challenging because many of the medications have side effects, such as nausea and vomiting, and the medicines do not always provide adequate pain relief," explains Rick Dutton, M.D., chief of trauma anesthesiology at the University of Maryland Medical Center and associate professor of anesthesiology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

He adds, "For years we’ve known that emotions can affect how patients perceive pain. Trauma patients, in particular, often feel additional stress and loss of control because their injuries come unexpectedly. By offering these complementary therapies, we hope to give patients more options for relaxation and stress relief, which can help with pain control and healing."

Shock Trauma patients have been offered acupuncture as part of their pain management for more than a year. Trained acupuncturists from the Center for Integrative Medicine have been coming to Shock Trauma several times a week to provide acupuncture to patients who request it. With positive feedback from patients, researchers from Shock Trauma and the Center for Integrative Medicine decided to design a study to see if there was a way to measure acupuncture’s potential benefit for these patients. 

"Shock Trauma patients who have received acupuncture as part of their pain management have reported significant drops in their pain scores; now we want to see if we can quantify the percentage of that change. We will also investigate the impact of acupuncture on chemicals in the blood that are markers for pain," says Lixing Lao, M.D., Ph.D., a licensed acupuncturist and director of the Program in Traditional Chinese Medicine Research at the University of Maryland Center for Integrative Medicine. Dr. Lao is also a professor of family and community medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

As part of the acupuncture research, 30 patients will be randomly selected to receive acupuncture, in addition to their regular care, on three consecutive days following surgery. The researchers will evaluate how much narcotic pain medicine these patients require in the first three days after surgery compared to 30 other patients with similar injuries, randomly selected to receive only conventional care after surgery.

The patients’ pain scores and blood samples will also be compared. The investigators plan to track biomarkers for pain and inflammation. These chemical measurements will include inflammatory cytokines, stress hormones such as cortisol and neurotransmitters such as beta-endorphins. 
 
Another complementary therapy offered at Shock Trauma is Reiki, which is part of a field known as energy medicine. According to the National Institutes of Health’s National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, during the therapy, the Reiki practitioner "places his or her hands on or near the person receiving treatment with intent to transmit ‘ki,’ which is believed to be a life-force energy." In fact, the word Reiki means "universal life energy."

"Reiki is a Japanese technique of relaxation that works similarly to acupuncture, in that you are releasing and moving energy," explains Donna Audia, R.N., a nurse on Shock Trauma’s pain management team and a certified Reiki master. "By using Reiki with trauma patients, we are not only helping them to relax, we’re also making them active participants in their own healing, and that can be very empowering."

Reaction from trauma patients has been positive, with most requesting follow-up treatments. In fact, many family members ask to be a part of the Reiki session. A group of volunteers trained in Reiki now visits Shock Trauma regularly. The University of Maryland Medical Center is the only facility in the country offering Reiki to trauma patients, although it has also been used to treat people with cancer and other illnesses.

"We find that Reiki promotes a feeling of calmness and well-being," explains Audia. "Patients who have received Reiki therapy tell us that they feel more relaxed and that their pain sometimes decreases. In some patients, heart and breathing rates actually slow down."

Shock Trauma’s pain management team has also offered music therapy, where specially trained musicians play for patients. A practitioner from the Center for Integrative Medicine has also brought crystal bowls to play for patients as part of sound therapy.

"In the same way that we know trauma patients benefit from having pastoral care, social workers, counselors and psychiatrists, we see these complementary therapies as another option we can offer our patients to help them in their recovery," says Dr. Dutton. 

"Caring for critically ill patients goes beyond just managing their pain, we also want to help them get back to a normal life," says Thomas M. Scalea, M.D., physician-in-chief at the University of Maryland Shock Trauma Center. "Acupuncture and Reiki are examples of our commitment to treating the whole person, and we are interested to see how these therapies may benefit trauma patients." Dr. Scalea is also professor of surgery and director of the Program in Trauma at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

Shock Trauma, located at the University of Maryland Medical Center in downtown Baltimore, cares for more than 7,500 injured patients each year. It serves as the Primary Adult Resource Center for Maryland's emergency medical services system, providing the state’s highest level of trauma care. The center’s full name, the R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center, honors Dr. R Adams Cowley who pioneered the concept of the "golden hour," the idea that patients who receive specialized treatment within the first hour after a traumatic injury are more likely to have better outcomes.

The University of Maryland Center for Integrative Medicine, located at Kernan Hospital, is a National Institutes of Health "Center of Excellence" for research in complementary and alternative medicine. It was the first program in a major U.S. academic health center to conduct research as well as offer patients care that integrates complementary therapies.

The July 23, 2007 issue of Newsweek spotlighted the cerebral resucitation research being done by the Department of Anesthesiology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

Excerpt: At the University of Maryland, Dr. Robert Rosenthal and Dr. Gary Fiskum have been looking into whether oxygen concentrations should be dialed down much more aggressively. In their lab, dogs with induced cardiac arrest recovered better when they were taken off full oxygen after just 12 minutes, compared with an hour in the control group. Rosenthal says in practice patients sometimes are left on pure oxygen for much longer than an hour — in one hospital he studied, for as much as 121 hours.

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