Improving the treatment speed and diagnostic accuracy of acute ischemic stroke
Dr. Christina Wilson
Email
christina.wilson@neurology.ufl.edu
Phone
(352) 273-5576
Faculty Department/Division
Neurology
This project is primarily:
Clinical
Research Project Description:
“Time is brain” is a common mantra in the treatment of acute ischemic stroke, as each second of an untreated stroke can result in permanent damage to over 32,000 neurons. Comprehensive stroke centers continuously strive to improve their treatment times in order to improve outcomes for patients. The UF Stroke Team has multiple ongoing projects to identify and address barriers to improving these times within specific patient populations. For example, one project is to understand factors that contribute to administration of thrombolytics later than desired (ie, greater than 30 minutes after arrival to the hospital), so that interventions can be designed to target these specific patient populations for faster treatment. Another ongoing study is to determine predictors of inaccurately-called inpatient stroke alerts as a first step towards creating targeted educational material for nursing to ensure that stroke team resources can remain focused on actual stroke patients. Other projects are available as well, and students with general interest in this area are encouraged to apply, Medical students will assist with data collection via retrospective chart review. These projects will likely lead to one or more presentations and publications, and best of all – your work will lead to improvements in the quality of stroke patient care!
Example publication: J Neurosci Nurs. 2021 Jun 1;53(3):134-139
Does this project have an international component or travel?
No
Blood biomarkers of post COVID-19 neurological complications: stroke and epilepsy
Name:
Dr. Maria Bruzzone
Email
maria.bruzzonegiraldez@neurology.ufl.edu
Phone
(352) 264-8404
Faculty Department/Division
Neurology
This project is primarily:
Clinical
Research Project Description:
Patients with COVID-19 are well recognized to be at risk of developing a wide range of neurologic manifestations of the disease. Patients can develop ischemic stroke, intracerebral hemorrhage, epilepsy, neuromuscular disease, and cognitive deficits. Currently, there is limited data regarding appropriate biomarkers that will allow for the prediction of who will develop neurologic manifestations and prognosis. We will be conducting a collaborative project evaluating blood biomarkers in COVID-19 patients with neurologic complications, including epilepsy and stroke. Students will be able to participate in this joint collaboration between Epilepsy and Stroke investigators and experience a team science approach in research.
Does this project have an international component or travel?
No
Artifical Intelligence for treating Essential Tremor in humans
Prof. Karim Oweiss
Email
koweiss@ufl.edu
Phone
(352) 294-1898
Faculty Department/Division
Neurology
This project is primarily:
Clinical
Research Project Description:
Essential Tremor (ET) is a movement disorder that results in a degraded quality of life and impaired activities of daily living for more than 7.2 million people in the US alone. Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) is an effective treatment for various forms of tremor. However, it is currently unknown how to optimize DBS parameters for a given patient given the measured motor symptoms. This project seeks to develop machine learning algorithms to analyze neural and behavioral data from human patients with ET undergoing DBS with different doses. The student role is to help collect the data and learn how to develop a model that can recognize which DBS parameters were used for a given motor task. Once trained, the model will be used to predict how future setting of DBS parameters might result in specific motor task performance to ameliorate the disease symptoms.
Project funded by NIH
Does this project have an international component or travel?
No
Movement Disorders in Cardiac Arrest Survivors
Dr. Carolina Maciel
Email
carolina.maciel@neurology.ufl.edu
Phone
(917) 355-2504
Faculty Department/Division
Neurology
This project is primarily:
Clinical
Research Project Description:
Functional recovery in patients who survived a cardiac arrest is challenged by cognitive and motor disability from hypoxic-ischemic brain injury. While most research has centered on cognitive deficits, movement disorders have remained unexplored despite its high prevalence. We seek to characterize the wide gamut of movement disorders plaguing cardiac arrest survivors by developing a retrospective registry, and hypothesize that up to one in five experience any type of myoclonus, rigidity or parkinsonism. We welcome medical students to participate in data collection in this project that lies in the intersection of neurocritical care and movement disorders.
Does this project have an international component or travel?
No