Residents, fellows, medical students and faculty mentors from our department had the opportunity to present their research to a diverse audience at the College of Medicine Research Poster Session on Tuesday, Feb. 28, in the O’Connell Center.
“I am super excited about the anesthesiology turnout this year. Walking down a row of anesthesiology posters is amazing. It’s nice to see what everyone else is doing around the college as well,” said Terrie Vasilopoulos, Ph.D., associate professor of anesthesiology and orthopaedic surgery & sports medicine, who was listed as an author on seven posters.
The event hosted a total of 486 posters with the Department of Anesthesiology’s contribution being 42. Topics ranged from a scoping review of artificial intelligence education in U.S. medical schools to a case report on endoscopic decompression for lumbar spinal stenosis.
Spotlighting Our Presenters
One of Vasilopoulos’ posters was titled “Acute Postoperative Pain Control Predicts Persistent Pain Trajectories Across the Six Months Following Surgery.” “Other predictors that we have found, both for acute pain and this persistent pain, is, interestingly, preoperative anxiety and catastrophizing,” she said. “So, people’s mental health and their patient-related factors before surgery are predicting their pain patterns after surgery.”
Third-year resident Angela Bott, D.O., presented a poster for the very first time. “I’m a little nervous but good,” Bott said. “My faculty mentor, Jeff White, is amazing and has my back on everything. My poster is about a near-miss airway disaster in the GI/NORA suite.”
Undergrad Ramon Martinez was also presenting for the first time. “I work in the anesthesiology department with the clinical research team, so I’ve been able to work on several different anesthesia studies and this happened to be one of them regarding how to don and doff personal protective equipment,” Martinez said. “I had the chance to be published on this paper and present it today.”
Anesthesiologist Keynote Speaker
This year’s event also featured an anesthesiologist as keynote speaker. Emery Brown, M.D., Ph.D., the Warren M. Zapol Professor of Anesthesia at Harvard Medical School and the Edward Hood Taplin Professor of Medical Engineering and of Computational Neuroscience at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, delivered his keynote speech on Monday, Feb. 27. “He gave one of the best talks I’ve seen on anesthesiology and the future of our work,” Vasilopoulos said. “I really think this has been the year of anesthesiology for this event.”
Residents expressed their gratitude to department staff for their help and support in abstract preparation and submission, editing and printing of posters and scheduling of their time so they could be there to participate.