NCS Roundup

Written By: Lauren Koffman DO, MS For those listeners that have been waiting for new podcasts to be released—the time has come! The NCS Podcast Series is excited to announce a relaunch of the series, led by Nicholas Morris. Fawaz Al-Mufti has passed the torch along, and while you will still hear some familiar voices, there will be several new rotating series as well. For those that enjoyed hearing authors’ insights into trials and publications, you will still be able to enjoy these episodes, in addition to a variety of other topics. A new series ...

I’d like to begin my update this month with something that I’m sure is on all of our minds — the devastating earthquake in Turkey and Syria. As the number of deaths and those displaced by the earthquake climb daily, we hold space for those impacted by the tragedy and those assisting in the recovery. NCS is a member of The World Federation of Intensive and Critical Care (WFICC) who are connected to efforts in the region. Please see the WFICC statement and video with information on ways we can help those affected by this tragedy and our global critical ...

Written By David Greer, MD, MA, FNCS, Professor and Chair of Neurology, Boston University and Boston Medical Center; Secretary NCS Sarah Livesay, DNP, APRN, FNCS, FAAN, Professor and Associate Dean, Rush University College of Nursing; President, NCS Panos Varelas, MD, PhD, FAAN, FNCS, Professor of Neurology and Chairman, Department of Neurology, Albany Medical College; Immediate Past President, NCS Paul Vespa, MD, Professor of Neurology and Neurosurgery, UCLA; Vice President, NCS Susan Yeager, DNP, APRN, FNCS, Neurocritical ...

Written by: Gene Sung, MD, MPH The earthquake in Southern Turkey and Northern Syria has created a humanitarian emergency which is rapidly unfolding and growing. In response, the initial focus of the World Federation of Intensive and Critical Care (WFICC) has been to connect with our colleagues in Turkey who have the local knowledge to identify the most immediate support needs and coordinate the responses from the international community. The government in Turkey has declared a Level 4 State of Emergency following a 7.8 magnitude earthquake and harsh ...

I hope this letter finds you well and hopefully warm, as we approach the end of the year. You may be warmed by a fireplace in the northern hemisphere or by the summer sun in the southern hemisphere. Regardless of the source, I hope you are rounding out the year happy and healthy. Though 2022 is winding down, NCS is already gearing up for 2023. I want to begin with an update on our work to address concerns regarding the ACGME Fellowship Program Requirements. Your NCS officers are working diligently to connect with key stakeholders both within NCS and ...

The 20th Neurocritical Care Society Annual Meeting online and in San Antonio, Texas, brought together an impressive gathering of more than 1,300 physicians, nurses, pharmacists, physician assistants, residents and trainees from across the globe. The meeting provided an opportunity for our community to gather together and share the latest research, guidelines and updates in the field of neurocritical care. I would like to share my appreciation to the Annual Meeting Committee for organizing such a spectacular meeting for all attendees. A special thank ...

October will be a very important month for all of us. We are coming close to the NCS Annual Meeting in San Antonio. I believe most of you are planning to attend in-person. Not a surprise here. We are social animals (sometimes with anti-social behaviors, for sure) and living during COVID-19 made our brains re-adjust to a different reality than the 300,000 years of homo sapiens evolution has led us to. And we were not happy. Last year with the first hybrid meeting, uniformly all attendees (including exhibitors!) agreed that the experience was much ...

Moving Forward Together With the Strength of Our Diverse Community The Neurocritical Care Society (NCS) is proud to launch the 2022 issue of Currents , featuring a compilation of content published on Currents throughout the year. Dr. Michael Reznik, Currents Editor-in-Chief introduces this year's issue... "We continue to envision a bright future for NCS, and this year’s Annual Meeting theme, 'Caring, Curing + Moving Forward,' reflects the optimism within the society that has helped us overcome all the challenges the last several years ...

August is running to its end; the daylight has started to narrow in the northern hemisphere and families are slowly returning from those vacation escapades to deal with the new school year’s adventures. Have you seen this before? NCS is again preparing for the Annual Meeting , this time in San Antonio! This is our second hybrid meeting, with expected record attendance. As we focus more and more on the event of the year , we are also fervently working on multiple other fronts, some distant from the Annual Meeting. The most important of those ...

I hope you are reading this letter in a relaxed environment, a beach, a resort, or at the airport waiting to board for a family vacation far away. I also hope unlike me last week, reading on quarantine, because I got Covid! Yes, indeed, I didn’t get it at its peak in 2020 nor 2021, and not even this winter. I wonder what I did wrong because I did not let down my defenses: I wore masks, washed my hands, used a paper towel when opening doors, and wiped my cellphone. My easy, anecdotal conclusion is this strain of the virus is more transmissible. It felt ...

Brooke Barlow, PharmD ( @TheABofPharmC ); Eric C. Lawson, MD ( @EricLawson90 ) #NCSTJC Moderators : @drdangayach @tchaaban1 Authors: @SWahlster @cj_creutzfeldt @jgranstein #NCSTJC Twitter Thread: https://twitter.com/i/events/1526241410856402944?s=20 Welcome to the #NCSTJC Round-up! May’s NCS Twitter Journal Club featured a lively discussion on the article, “Taking a Chance to Recover: Families Look Back on the Decision to Pursue Tracheostomy in Severe Brain Injury” by William Lou et al published in Neurocritical Care ...

As I am writing these lines, June is not over. But, I am in a hurry to write this letter on this sunny and windy Sunday’s evening, because tomorrow I start a 7-day straight NEURO-ICU service. And I don’t foresee I will have time for anything else. The last time I was in the NEURO-ICU, it was in the end of May and it was busy. I estimate that in a week I spent 93 hours in the hospital and probably more than 85 hours in the NEURO-ICU managing patients. You may immediately say “that is excessive, especially when trainees are not allowed to spend 80 hours/week ...

As I am writing these lines, June is not over. But, I am in a hurry to write this letter on this sunny and windy Sunday’s evening, because tomorrow I start a 7-day straight NEURO-ICU service. And I don’t foresee I will have time for anything else. The last time I was in the NEURO-ICU, it was in the end of May and it was busy. I estimate that in a week I spent 93 hours in the hospital and probably more than 85 hours in the NEURO-ICU managing patients. You may immediately say “that is excessive, especially when trainees are not allowed to spend 80 hours/week ...

Colleagues: The Neurocritical Care Society Board of Directors is pleased to announce that Mindy Saraco has been named the new executive director for the organization. In her role, Mindy will lead the organization’s headquarters staff operations and will be responsible for the implementation of NCS’ strategic priorities. In addition, Mindy appreciates our high expectations of service excellence, organization, and staff accountability. This is an exciting time of growth for NCS that requires strong leadership. Over the last three months, the NCS ...

Lauren Koffman, DO, MS As a member of the Educational Products Committee, one of many committees within the Neurocritical Care Society, I was recently asked to review A Guide to Traumatic Brain Injury: The Intensive Care Unit . This guide was written several years ago by Dr. David Y. Hwang and Dayla Maisey. Dayla narrates the book, providing a firsthand experience of what family members can expect to see, hear and discuss when they have a loved one admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU) with a brain injury. After reviewing the guide I could ...

Jenna Gonillo Davis, MS, ACNPC-AG, CCRN Angie Murkins, FNP-BC Ana Kukulj, FNP-C, MSN, BSN, RN Advanced practice providers (APPs) have become the ever-present providers in critical care departments. They act as a stabilizing force for intensive care units (ICU) where residents and fellows rotate and may not have the same level of interest in critical care as a prospective intensivist. The consistent presence of APPs makes the integration, advancement, and education of APPs essential to maintain a highly functional ICU. With ...

Nicolas Chiriboga, MD (@NChiriboga); Eric C. Lawson, MD (@EricLawson90) Moderator: @EricLawson90 Authors: @RebeccaJLevyMD, @ewmayne Link to Twitter Thread: https://twitter.com/neurocritical/status/1513880138328457228?s=21&t=gpKicZn6wmBOKzVi2UCg4Q April’s NCS Twitter Journal Club featured a lively discussion of the article Seizure Risk in Infants After Bypass Without Hypothermic Arrest by Rebecca Levy et al . This was a single-center, observational cohort study that aimed to characterize the risk of seizures ...

Have you planned for your summer vacations? Well, some will say “we prefer snow skiing in the winter”, but I bet that most of you will take some days off to visit a beach, a lake, have a boat-trip. A summer vacation. NCS does not take vacations. It was a busy month for the Society, and June will be similar. There have been new developments on several fronts: NCS has collaborated with our management partner, Smithbucklin, on the pathway to identify our new Executive Director. We have already started the process of interviewing candidates and we will ...

By Panayiotis (Panos) N. Varelas, MD, PhD, FAAN, FNCS May has arrived and even in Upstate New York, nature is changing fast, few days after the last (maybe?) snow. There are already little buds in the trees and even some flowers. Everything is changing, with eternal cycles that repeat themselves, but also with changes that in our lifetimes do not repeat themselves and to our eyes seem dramatically new. Climate change may be one that I witness in my lifetime. Changes happen in a Society like ours, which behaves like a living and thriving organism. ...

Brianna Burlock, MD, MPH; Eric C. Lawson, MD ( @EricLawson90 ) Moderator: @gdomeni Authors: @GreerWaldrop, @sas_mdphd , @MeganRx1 Link to Twitter Thread: https://twitter.com/neurocritical/status/1503728992792231940?s=21 March’s Twitter journal club, done in conjunction with the Curing Coma Campaign ( @CuringComa ) and American Neurological Association ( @TheNewANA1 ), featured a discussion on the article, “Prolonged unconsciousness is common in COVID-19 and associated with hypoxemia” by Greer Waldrop et al. This was ...

By Panayiotis (Panos) N. Varelas, MD, PhD, FAAN, FNCS Yes, There is Hope We are in April and nature is slowly waking up from its white hibernation in the northern states. As I was writing this, I could not restrain myself from drawing a parallel with a major achievement of NCS, the second annual World Coma Day, which just occurred. I hope many of you joined us for the full day of content, but even the few hours of connecting were eye-opening for many of us. Even for providers who work in neuro-ICUs and encounter comatose patients every day, ...