Contact Information Available for logged-in reporters only Newswise Washington, DC, December 8 - Resective surgery is an effective treatment for dug-resistant epilepsy. To investigate the effect of epilepsy surgery on patients lives, researchers from the Comprehensive Epilepsy Program at the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit conducted a long-term retrospective follow up of surgical patients and correlated post-surgical psychosocial outcomes with seizure outcome and brain area surgically treated. In a research report presented today at the American Epilepsy Society 67th Annual Meeting, the investigators conducted telephone interviews with more than half of all epilepsy surgery patients operated on at their center between 1993 and 2011. Of those contacted, 215 had undergone temporal lobe surgery and 38 had surgery in other brain areas. (Poster 3.249 / Abstract 1749424 Long-term Post-operative Psychosocial Outcomes after Resective Surgery for Epilepsy.) More than threefourths of temporal lobe patients (78%) had a favorable surgical outcome (seizure free or having only rare disabling seizures), and over half of extra-temporal surgical patients (58%) had a similar outcome. Almost all of the patients (92%) considered the surgical treatment to have been worthwhile. Our study shows that resective epilepsy surgery not only yields favorable seizure outcomes but psychosocial outcomes, as well, … Continue reading →

Contact Information Available for logged-in reporters only Newswise PHILADELPHIA The Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania will join a new national network of 25 regional stroke centers selected to advance stroke research on prevention, treatment and recovery. Stroke the fourth leading cause of death in the US, and the new program, initiated by the National Institutes of Health, aims to allow the most promising therapies to quickly advance to the clinic, to improve prevention, acute treatment, or rehabilitation of the stroke patient. The Centers were announced today by the National Institutes of Health. Penn Medicines interdisciplinary Stroke Center is poised to offer the newest possible treatment, prevention, and rehabilitation options in the greater Philadelphia region and Delaware Valley, said Scott Kasner, MD, professor of Neurology and director of Penns Comprehensive Stroke Center. Successful applicants demonstrated experience in stroke research and recruitment, including the ability to enroll underrepresented populations, and were required to offer access to the full cadre of specialties that are involved in stroke care. These include: emergency medicine, neurosurgery, interventional neuroradiology, vascular neurology, neurointensive care, neuroimaging, stroke rehabilitation and pediatric neurology. The 25 centers are strategically placed in every region of the country. NIH StrokeNet … Continue reading →

Published: Friday, Dec. 13, 2013, 12:21p.m. Updated 1 hour ago The University of Pittsburgh will participate in a network of 25 regional stroke centers assembled to advance and streamline research on stroke prevention, treatment and recovery, the National Institutes of Health announced on Friday. This network represents a new and innovative approach to finding more effective methods to prevent and treat strokes, said Dr. Lawrence Wechsler, professor and chair of the Department of Neurology at Pitt's School of Medicine and founder of the UPMC Stroke Institute. Pitt, which is working in coordination with the UPMC Stroke Institute, is the only network site in Western Pennsylvania. The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke will coordinate and finance the network. The regional stroke centers will receive $200,000 for research costs and $50,000 for training stroke-clinical researchers per year over the first three years. NIH StrokeNet will allow the most promising therapies to quickly advance to the clinic, to improve prevention, acute treatment, or rehabilitation of the stroke patient, said Dr. Walter J. Koroshetz, deputy director of the institute. Debra Erdley is a staff writer for Trib Total Media. She can be reached at 412-320-7996 or derdley@tribweb.com. You are solely responsible for … Continue reading →

Contact Information Available for logged-in reporters only Newswise A network of 25 nationally recognized stroke centers has been created to rapidly address the three core features of stroke research and care: prevention, treatment and recovery. The regional coordinating centers (RCCs), working with nearby satellite facilities, will span the country and have teams of researchers representing every stroke-related medical specialty, with the primary goal of bringing new therapies and strategies to the stroke community more rapidly. The centers, which include UC San Diego Health System as a grant recipient, were announced yesterday by the National Institutes of Health. The new system is intended to streamline stroke research, by centralizing approval and review, lessening time and costs of clinical trials, and assembling a comprehensive data sharing system, said Petra Kaufmann, MD, associate director for clinical research at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS). NINDS, which will fund and manage the NIH Stroke Trials Network, or NIH StrokeNet, has a strong history of successful stroke clinical trials over the past 40 years, leading to critical advances in treatment and prevention of the disease, including the first treatment for acute stroke in 1995, the rt-PA clot-buster. UC San Diego Health System … Continue reading →

The National Institutes of Health chose theUniversity of Iowa, along with 24 other regional stroke centers, to participate in a national research network that aims to improve care for people affected by stroke in Iowa and across the country. The network of stroke centers will have teams research stroke prevention, treatment and recovery.The number of new strokes reported each year is about 795,000, making it the fourth leading cause of death in the United States this number is expected to rise rapidly as the population ages over the next decade. The new system is intended to streamline stroke research by centralizing approval and review, lessening time and costs of clinical trials, and assembling a comprehensive data sharing system, said Dr. Petra Kaufmann, associate director for clinical research at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, in a prepared statement. The institute will fund and manage the NIH Stroke Trials Network, or NIH StrokeNet. Each center will receive five-year funding, with $200,000 in research costs and $50,000 for training stroke clinical researchers, per year over the first three years. Additional funds will be awarded based on the completion of milestones.Dr. Enrique Leira, an associate professor of neurology with UI Health … Continue reading →

Five key events in 2013 will leave a longlasting mark on psychiatry. Here: a look at the impact that CPT coding, DSM-5, sunshine laws, a shrinking market for shrinks, and I-STOP are likely to have on our field. CPT coding and the re-medicalization of psychiatry Starting January 1, 2013, psychiatrists adopted the E&M (evaluation and management) billing codes used by medical colleagues. These billing codes affect more than money and mean more than promises of parity with other medical specialties. Learning coding is confusing and time-consumingbut CPT codes redirect our gaze and change the way psychiatrists think. This may be one of many steps toward ending the supposedly separate but equal categories of mental illness and medical illness. Back in 1977, then-president of the APA Mel Sabshin, MD, urged psychiatrists to return to their medical rootsroots that were frayed by psychoanalysts who deemed medical training unnecessary and accepted lay analysis instead. Change takes time, however. The power and prestige of psychoanalysis faded slowly but surely, but still leaves its legacy. In 2013, the AMA elected a psychiatrist, Jeremy Lazarus, MD, as its president. APA and AMA presidential pronouncements aside, the substance of CPT coding shifts the attention of psychiatrists. Higher … Continue reading →