Dr. Kaczka’s research interests focus on quantifying mechanical heterogeneity in diseases of the respiratory system, such as asthma, COPD, and acute lung injury. His lab relies on several advanced engineering techniques to quantify lung heterogeneity and optimize ventilation distribution, such as forced oscillation measurements of lung impedance, digital signal processing, functional lung imaging, and computational modeling of respiratory mechanics.
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Drs. Dexter, Hindman and colleagues are studying how anesthesia residents and nurse anesthetists evaluate faculty in order to better measure clinical performance and supervision of individual anesthesiologists.
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Dr. Hindman and colleagues are studying the effect of the force of the laryngoscope blade on patients with cervical spine instability. The goal of this research is to develop new, c-spine injury-specific intubation protocols that minimize the risk of neurologic damage in patients with high risk forms of cervical instability.
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Drs. Bayman, Brennan and colleagues are assessing demographic, psychosocial, and surgical factors as predictors of acute and chronic pain after thoracic surgery using both frequentist and Bayesian statistical modeling.
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Although adult radial artery cannulation is a common invasive procedure in the operating room, intensive care unit and emergency department, successful radial artery cannulation can be technically challenging. The use of ultrasound by anesthetic trainees was more likely to succeed on the first attempt under ultrasound guidance compared with Doppler and palpation techniques, although there was no difference 5 min after the first attempt commenced.
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Drs. Kang, Brennan and colleagues are studying the mechanisms of functional impairment, including pain and motor dysfunction, after major surgery using rodent models. Better understanding these mechanisms will allow us to develop new perioperative strategies that can facilitate the recovery of activity for many postoperative patients.
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Smoking (nicotine) and chronic pain appear to function in a feed-forward cycle in which each promotes the other. Dr. Hammond’s lab is investigating the biological mechanisms by which injury may cause nicotine to lose its analgesic effects or nicotine may facilitate the chronification of pain after injury.
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