Children's National Health System

IN THE NEWS | | | N E W S N O T E S | | | | People IN THE NEWS | EUGENIE "GENIE" HEITMILLER, MD, FAAP, was named Chief of Anesthesiology. MARY OTTOLINI, MD, Vice Chair of Education at Children's National Health System, was named President-elect of the Academic Pediatric Association, by far the largest elected academic society in our field. CRAIG SABLE, MD, has led eight medical missions to Uganda, delivering critical cardiovascular treatment to more than 150 children and helping transform the cardiology program at the Uganda Heart Institute at Mulago Hospital so that open heart surgery can now be safely performed there. WASHINGTONIAN TO P D O C TO R S 2 0 1 5 Congratulations to the Children's National and Pediatric Specialists of Virginia physicians named to the 2015 Washingtonian Top Doctors list. Their dedication to excellence provides children with the exceptional care they deserve. This recognition affirms the high level of Children's National expertise and our commitment to providing the best care to children and families in the region. CHILDREN'S NATIONAL SPECIALISTS NAMED "TOP DOCTORS" C H I L D R E N 'S N AT I O N A L R E S E A R C H E R S C U R E M I C E O F N E U R O B L ASTO M A Using immunotherapy, a team at Children's National was able to incite the immune systems in mice to attack neuroblastoma tumor cells, a development that could have implications for using immunotherapy in humans. Currently, neuroblastoma is the second most common form of cancerous tumor in children. The end goal of the research is to provide "therapeutic" vaccines to human cancer patients that would help the immune system target cancer cells, according to Anthony Sandler, MD, Senior Vice President and Surgeon-in-chief of the Joseph E. Robert, Jr. Center for Surgical Care and Principal Investigator of the Immunology Initiative at the Sheikh Zayed Institute for Pediatric Surgical Innovation at Children's National. ST U D I E S F I N D M E T H O D S TO I M P R OV E K I D N E Y C A N C E R O U TC O M E S I N C H I L D R E N Treatment for advanced stage Wilms tumors, the most common kidney cancer in children, have shown significant improvement in a series of studies presented at the 51st meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology. The studies revealed that personalized treatments for certain cancers led to a significant increase in survival rates. "With a combination of identifying novel clinical risk factors and biological markers, we are able to tailor therapy on the basis of a patient's risk of tumor recurrence," says Jeffrey Dome, MD, PhD, Division Chief of Oncology and Hematology at Children's National, who supervised the clinical trials as part of the Children's Oncology Group. ST U DY I M P R OV E S STA N DA R D O F C A R E FO R C H I L D R E N A F T E R C A R D I AC A R R E ST A six-year effort, one of the largest and most complex cardiac studies of its kind, shows that either therapeutic hypothermia or maintenance of body temperature within a normal range can be effective for treating children during cardiac arrest. This study opens the door for evidence-based guidelines that would improve the quality of pediatric care and outcomes for children who had cardiac arrests, says John T. Berger, III, MD, Medical Director of Cardiac Intensive Care, Director of Pulmonary Hypertension Program, Divisions of Critical Care Medicine and Cardiology, and site Principal Investigator for the study. The findings were published in The New England Journal of Medicine. C H I L D R E N 'S N AT I O N A L N A M E D R E C I P I E N T O F D C H O S P I TA L AS S O C I AT I O N AWA R D S Children's National received two prestigious awards at the DC Hospital Association Awards in late September, including the Environmental Excellence Award for the health system and Distinguished Service Awards for Roberta DeBiasi, MD, MS, and Xiaoyan Song, PhD, MBBS. CARDIAC SURGERY Richard Jonas, MD CARDIOLOGY Jeffrey Becker, MD Charles Berul, MD Mary Donofrio, MD Thomas Hougen, MD Joshua Kanter, MD Gerard Martin, MD Kanishka Ratnayaka, MD Craig Sable, MD DERMATOLOGY Scott Norton, MD, MPH, MSc ENDOCRINOLOGY Fran Cogen, MD, CDE GASTROENTEROLOGY/ HEPATOLOGY Ali Bader, MD Laurie Conklin, MD Benny Kerzner, MD Parvathi Mohan, MD John Snyder, MD GENERAL AND COMMUNITY PEDIATRICS Dinea DeSouza, MD Ellen Hamburger, MD Ellen O'Brien, MD Edward Sepe, MD HEMATOLOGY/ ONCOLOGY Jeffrey Dome, MD, PhD Jay Greenberg, MD Michael Guerrera, MD Christopher Lawlor, MD* Carly Varela, MD* INFECTIOUS DISEASES Roberta DeBiasi, MD, MS Barbara Jantausch, MD Bernhard Wiedermann, MD, MA NEPHROLOGY Kanwal Kher, MD, MBA NEUROLOGY Marc DiFazio, MD Bennett Lavenstein, MD* William McClintock, MD* Roger Packer, MD NEUROSURGERY Robert Keating, MD John Myseros, MD OPHTHALMOLOGY Mohamad Jaafar, MD ORTHOPAEDIC SURGERY AND SPORTS MEDICINE Jeffrey Hanway, MD* Emily Hattwick, MD* Benjamin Martin, MD* Matthew Oetgen, MD Laura Tosi, MD OTOLARYNGOLOGY Diego Preciado, MD, PhD Rahul Shah, MD George Zalzal, MD PHYSICAL REHABILITATION MEDICINE Justin Burton, MD Sarah Evans, MD PLASTIC AND RECONSTRUCTIVE SURGERY Michael Boyajian, MD RADIOLOGY Karun Sharma, MD SURGERY A. Alfred Chahine, MD Louis Marmon, MD, PhD Anthony Sandler, MD UROLOGY M. David Gibbons, MD Hans Pohl, MD H. Gil Rushton, MD * denotes physician is also with Pediatric Specialists of Virginia 3

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