Yale Neurons Writing Textbook on Neurology, Literally!

A huge shout out to Amy Yu, one of our all star PGY2 residents for already publishing a book chapter before the end of her PGY2 year. Incredible! Amy worked with Dr. Kevin Sheth, Chief of Neurocritical Care at Yale, to publish a chapter (18) entitled Intra-Arterial Interventions for Acute Basilar Artery Occlusion in a 2 volume textbook on the Basilar Artery (full description and table of contents here). This is a huge deal, and we are super proud of her!

             

Yale Neurons Dropping Knowledge Bombs in the City of Lights!

Neuro-ophthalmology is becoming more popular than ever in our program, with two of our PGY4 residents, Rachel Calix and Bryce Buchowicz, pursuing neuro-ophthalmology fellowships next year. Bryce will be at Emory, and Rachel will be at NYU. They both were fortunate to be able to attend the 2019 NANOS conference in Neuro-ophthalmology in Las Vegas this past month, and Bryce was able to present two posters:

-Attitudes and Perceptions of Neurology Residents in the U.S. to Neuro-ophthalmology 

Bryce surveyed neurology residents across the country to determine exposure to and attitudes towards neuro-ophthalmology as a subspecialty and found that the main contributing factor for not choosing this subspecialty is limited exposure early in training.

 

-Relative afferent pupillary defect with contralateral demyelinating midbrain lesion in a patient with Charcot’s Triad

Case report of a left relative afferent pupillary defect secondary to demyelinating lesions in the right optic tract and/or right dorsal midbrain.

Abstracts can be found here.

Follow-up To Anna Deforest’s Awesome NEJM Article on End of Life Language

In follow-up to her exceptional NEJM article Better Words for Better Deaths, Anna was recently interviewed by Alex Smith on a podcast called Language Matters on Geripal: A Geriatrics and Palliative Care Blog. It’s yet another huge honor and a job very well done. It’s a great interview, and you can take a listen here:

Language Matters: Podcast With Brian Block and Anna Deforest

Second WIN Meeting a Huge Success!

After the wild success of the first ever Women in Neurology (WIN) Meeting in September, a second meeting was held this month and was just as productive and popular as the first! Several female members of the residency, staff and faculty met at the home of Sara Schaefer, former Yale neurology resident and current associate program director for snacks, drinks, and conversation. It’s exciting to see such an important forum for women in the field to meet, share experiences, and foster mentorship relationships. The group was so caught up in conversation that a photo was not taken until most people had left, but here are a few of the residents and faculty who stayed a bit later. Thanks to all for a great evening!

 

Yale Neurons Dropping Knowledge Bombs in the City of Brotherly Love!

Congratulations to all of the Yale Neurology Residents who had abstracts accepted for the upcoming American Academy of Neurology annual meeting in Philadelphia this coming May. Below are some of the awesome presentations we can look forward to from our awesome residents:

  • Idaira Aguilar, PGY4
    • Neurological symptoms in a patient diagnosed with adrenal oncocytic cortical carcinoma (poster)
  • Priyanka Chilakamarri, PGY3
    • Suicidal Behavior in Parkinson Disease (poster)
  • Vanessa Cooper, PGY3
    • A Survey Comparing Neurology and Internal Medicine Residents’ Approaches to Headache Management (poster)
  • Justine Cormier, PGY4
    • A Case of Paraneoplastic Myasthenia Gravis as the Initial Presentation in a Patient with Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma (poster)
    •  The Impact of a Novel Clinic Block System on Resident and Faculty Satisfaction, Work-Life Balance, and Subspecialty Exposure (Platform Presentation)
  • Tara Kimbrough, PGY4
    • Psychological Attachment Styles of Surrogate Decision Makers and Neuro ICU Goals of Care Decisions (poster)
  • Paul Sanmartin, PGY4
    • Brainstem Posterior Reversible Encephalopathy Syndrome (poster)
    • West Nile encephalitis in a patient with initially negative CSF serology (poster)
  • Jens Witsch, PGY3
    • Validation of the original FRESH score in patients with subarachnoid hemorrhage (poster)
  • Teng Peng Zhao, PGY2
    • Potassium Bromide: The First Successful Treatment of Epilepsy (poster)

Representing Yale Neurons Across the Globe- feat. Razaz Mageid

A huge congratulations to Dr. Razaz Mageid for her acceptance as a Yale/Stanford Johnson & Johnson Global Health Scholar. Razaz will be carrying the torch of residents working to promote international Neurology by traveling to Uganda during the 2019-2020 academic year. As part of her training in the Yale Neurology Global Health Track, Razaz will spend 6 weeks at Mulago Hospital in Uganda rotating with physicians and medical staff there and learning about health care delivery in a resource limited setting.

She will be our third resident in recent years to travel to Uganda as part of the Global Health Track. Adeel Zubair, current PGY3, is finishing up his time in Uganda now (stay tuned for updates on his experiences there), and before him Monica Diaz (now a neuro-infectious disease fellow in San Diego) traveled there. See more about her experiences in this post. Congrats again, Razaz!

Yale Neurons Sculpting Future Neuro Minds, feat Adeel Zubair

A huge congratulations to Dr. Adeel Zubair on his recent acceptance to the Master of Health Science Medical Education Program! Adeel is one of our PGY3 residents currently rotating in Uganda as a Yale/Stanford Johnson and Johnson Global Health School as part of his grander experience on the Yale Neurology Global Health Track (stay tuned for a post on his experiences once he gets back!). He is also a rising Scheduling Chief. In addition to his global health interests, Adeel has shown a clear dedication to medical education, and his acceptance to the two-year MHS Med-Ed program will be a huge stepping stone in his career. Before long, Adeel will be sculpting the future of Neurology both at Yale and abroad. We couldn’t be more proud!

Advancing the Knowledge of our Collective Brain- Feat. Anna Deforest

Image result for nejm

A huge shout out to one of our awesome PGY2’s, Dr. Anna Deforest, for her recent publication in NEJM, Better Words for Better DeathsHer beautifully-written piece discusses the language that we, as health care providers, use to discuss end-of-life care and how the words we choose can influence our relationships with patients and their families and can also subconsciously affect the quality of the care we provide to our patients as they near end of life. She encourages us to be as thoughtful surrounding the way we discuss end of life care and decision making as we are in discussing life-sustaining measures. Her piece was recently featured in a writing symposium at Yale (see here for details), and not surprisingly she went on to have her manuscript picked up by NEJM. Outstanding work, Anna!

 

Advancing the knowledge of our collective brain, feat. Razaz Mageid, PGY2

Razaz is starting PGY2 year off with a bang by showing us the importance of sharing our experiences with the neurology community to help us all learn. She recently published a case report on a patient she saw presenting with headaches and a seizure who was found to have a Vein of Labbe thrombosis. What a great case! Congrats, Razaz! The article will be published in the next print of Brain Circulation, but here is the title and abstract for your early perusal!

 

Vein of Labbe thrombosis, a near‑miss.                         Razaz Mageid, Yuchuan Ding1 , Paul Fu

Emergency department visits for a headache are relatively common, and in most cases, the etiologies of the headache are typically benign. We present a case of a patient who presented to the emergency room for new onset of unremitting unilateral headache. She subsequently had two hospital visits and three separate imaging modalities to identify vein of Labbe thrombosis. The vein of Labbe is a relatively smaller vein which runs superficially and laterally. In our patient, a cerebral venous thrombosis (CTV) was unable to identify vein of Labbe thrombosis, requiring eventually a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) with and without contrast to identify the culprit etiology. CTV is frequently used in the acute setting due to its speed of acquisition and shorter wait times in the hospital. For  patients that fit criteria for venous sinus thrombosis, we caution the use of CTV in identifying the causative etiology, and would consider the MRI as a better imaging modality for these patients. 

 

Developing the future of headache medicine, feat. Vanessa Cooper, PGY3!

Congratulations to Vanessa Cooper, PGY3, for being selected to participate in the International Headache Academy, sponsored by the American Headache Society. The International Headache Academy is designed to inspire a long-term commitment to headache medicine in young neurologists and research scientists via an educational program focused on clinical and research aspects of the field. Vanessa will be attending this incredible course on January 17-19th 2019 at UCLCA. Congrats, V!