Health and Medicine

Unstable federal research funding and reductions in health care revenue for academic medical centers threatens to undermine the nation’s biomedical research enterprise, and in turn clinical medicine, which the nation needs now more than ever.

For colorectal surgery patients at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, the introduction last summer of a new patient care protocol, which includes intensive follow-up by anesthesiologists in the hospital, has led to an average 25 percent reduction in hospital length of stay after surgery — from four days to three — and 90 percent reduction in the use of opioids to treat post-operative pain.

As health care organizations implement new strategies to improve quality and reduce costs, a physician researcher at VUMC is setting out to identify whether there could be unintended effects.

With support from a three-year, $2 million research grant from Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), Vanderbilt University Medical Center and the American Heart Association are teaming up to study heart failure care in the Emergency Department.

With the help of a computer program called “Rosetta,” researchers at Vanderbilt University have “redesigned” an antibody that has increased potency and can neutralize more strains of the AIDS-causing human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) than can any known natural antibody.

In an especially underserved region of western Kenya, expectant mothers requiring cesarean section are the focus of a new $2.6 million grant to Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC), Kenya’s AIC Kijabe Hospital and the Kenya-based Center for Public Health and Development.

Using probiotics may help alleviate the symptoms of allergic rhinitis (AR), also known as seasonal or perennial allergies, according to a Vanderbilt study that reviewed 23 previous trials.