The tenth annual Safar Symposium was held on June 27-28, 2012. This yearly event honors the late Dr. Peter Safar and his wife Eva for their contributions to the scientific community and highlights current research in areas spanning Dr. Safar’s interests.
The symposium began with the third annual Multi-Departmental Trainees’ Research Day on June 27th, a collaboration between the Departments of Anesthesiology, Critical Care Medicine, Emergency Medicine, and Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation, and the Peter M. Winter Institute for Simulation Education and Research (WISER). This multi-departmental event is an outgrowth of the first Anesthesiology Research Day held in 2009 and featured 33 posters and five oral presentations from trainees in the four collaborating departments. Forty percent of the abstracts were submitted by trainees in the Department of Anesthesiology.
Helen Shnol, BS, a research scholar working with Inna Belfer, MD, PhD, won best poster from the Department of Anesthesiology for “Pain Phenotypes in American Breast Cancer Survivors Following Mastectomy: Analysis of Clinical, Demographic, Psychosocial, and Psychophysical Correlates.” In addition, Tommy S. Tillman, PhD, a postdoctoral scholar and manager of Dr. Yan Xu’s laboratory, won first place among all the oral presentations for “Reversal of Ion Charge Selectivity Renders the Pentameric Ligand-Gated Ion Channels GLIC Insensitive to Anesthetics.”
The second day of the symposium included both the Peter and Eva Safar Lecture, as well as morning and afternoon sessions highlighting current research on breakthroughs in pediatric resuscitation. The morning session featured the following lectures:
- “New Developments in Pediatric CPR: Saving More Lives” by Robert Berg, MD, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia
- “Continuous EEG Monitoring in Children with Acute Brain Injury” by Cecil D. Hahn, MD, Sickkids, Toronto, CA
- “General Anesthesia and the Developing Brain: Is There a Cause for Concern” by Vesna Jevtovic-Todorovic, MD, PhD, MBA, University of Virginia
School of Medicine
- “Application of Neuroimaging Findings to Pediatric Traumatic Brain Injury” by Linda Ewing-Cobbs, PhD, Dan L. Duncan Children’s Neuro-developmental Clinic, Houston
- “Innovative Neuroimaging Biomarkers of Pediatric Hypoxic-Ischemic Brain Injury” by Ashok Panigrahy, MD, Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC
- “Neuroprotective Effects of Mitochondria-Targeted Nitroxide after Traumatic Brain Injury” by Jing Ji, MD, PhD, Research Fellow, Safar Center for Resuscitation Research, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine
Gabriel G. Haddad, MD, Professor of Pediatrics and Neuroscience, Chair, Department of Pediatrics, University of California, San Diego, and Physician-in-Chief and Chief Scientific Officer at the Rady Children’s Hospital in San Diego, delivered the 32nd Peter and Eva Safar Annual Lecture in Medical Sciences and Humanities on the topic of “Tolerance and Susceptibility to Hypoxia: New Lessons From Vertebrate and Invertebrate Model Systems.” Patrick M. Kochanek, MD (Director, Safar Center for Resuscitation Research) and John P. Williams, MD (Peter and Eva Safar Professor and Chair, Department of Anesthesiology) co-host this annual lectureship.
The afternoon session on simulation was held at WISER and featured the following presentations:
- “Creating a Simulated Drug Detection System” by Doug Nelson, BS, Graduate Student Researcher and Teaching Assistant at the University of Pittsburgh Simulation and Medical Technology R&D Center
- “Virtual Patient Technology and Competence Simulation” by J. Hurley Myers, PhD, Emeritus Professor of Physiology & Medicine, Southern Illinois University School of Medicine, Carbondale, IL
- “Mastery Training in Simulation to Ensure Patient Safety” by John M. O’Donnell, DrPH, MSN, CRNA, University of Pittsburgh Nurse Anesthesia Program
- “Simulation Training for Fire and EMS” by Gene McDaniel, BS, Captain and Paramedic of the Phoenix Fire Department
