HJNO Sep/Oct 2019

Healthcare Journal of New Orleans I  SEP / OCT 2019 37 For weekly eNews updates and to read the journal online, visit HealthcareJournalNO.com anesthetist (CRNA). In addition to directing LSU Health New Orleans’Nurse Anesthesia Pro- gram, she currently serves as vice-president of the Louisiana State Board of Nursing, and pre- viously served two years as president. Bonanno is a member of the editorial board of The Inter- national Journal of Student Nurse Anesthetists. Bonanno has been a practicing CRNA for more than 24 years and has experience in the admin- istration of general anesthesia and monitored anesthesia care for all types of surgical and diag- nostic procedures. She participates in yearly medical/surgical mission trips to Guatemala. Her research interest and publication areas include interprofessional education, simulation, and clinical evaluation of students. She received the Advanced Practice Nurse of the Year Award for Louisiana in 2016, the LSU Health New Orleans Anesthesia Department’s Excellence in TeachingAward, and was named one of the Great 100 Nurses of Louisiana. Bonanno has also been recognized by the National Scholars Honor Soci- ety, the Golden Key International Honour Society, and Phi Kappa Phi. Sophia L. Thomas Assumes Presidency of AANP at National Conference in Indianapolis More than 4,000 nurse practitioners con- vened in Indianapolis for the 2019 National Con- ference of the American Association of Nurse Practitioners (AANP) where the organization welcomed Sophia L. Thomas, DNP, FNP, PNP, FAANP,as its new president.TheAANP is the larg- est organization representing nurse practition- ers (NPs) of all specialties in the United States. Thomas brings 23 years of experience as a fam- ily NP, serving predominantly low-income and underserved populations in NewOrleans, La. She has held clinical roles as a family NP and pediatric NP. In addition to her clinical work,Thomas brings to her new post extensive teaching, leadership, and advocacy experience. She is a past president of the Louisiana Association of Nurse Practition- ers and an AANP board member. “As we work to expand primary care access to more than 80millionAmericans living in primary care shortage areas nationwide, I am proud to represent the voices of more than 270,000 nurse practitioners and countless patients. Together, we can ensure patients have access to high-qual- ity health care delivered by the provider of their choice,” said Thomas. Thomas succeeds Joyce Knestrick, PhD,APRN, C-FNP, who has served as AANP president for two years and is now AANP immediate past president. Thomas earned a DNP fromLoyola University in New Orleans, a Master’s in Nursing, Nurse Prac- titioner from Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center, a Master’s in Nursing fromLou- isiana State University Medical Center, and a Bachelor’s of Science in Nursing fromNortheast Louisiana University.  Funding Moves Inventions of Physician-Scientists Closer to Commercialization Half of the grants in the latest round of LSU LIFT2 funding were awarded for technologies invented by LSUHealth NewOrleans faculty.The LSU LIFT2 Fund was created by the LSU Board of Supervisors in January of 2014 to help“Lever- age Innovation for Technology Transfer” across all the campuses of the LSU system. Grants are awarded to employees on a competitive basis twice a year, in amounts up to $50,000, to val- idate the market potential of their inventions. LSU Health New Orleans was awarded nearly $200,000 this round to help move its faculty inventions toward commercialization. The newly funded LSU Health New Orleans technologies advance diagnostics for cancer and surgical repair techniques. Two Otolaryngology faculty members – Drs. Michael Dunham and Andrew McWhorter – developed a new system to identify potentially cancerous lesions when looking at a patient’s vocal cords using an endoscope. Their inven- tion more easily distinguishes between cancer- ous and non-cancerous lesions. Deploying this system when scoping a patient’s throat has the potential to rapidly identify cancerous vocal cord lesions and improve the success of surgi- cally removing them.This invention could lead to faster diagnosis and fewer surgeries.  Dr. Eugene Woltering, chief of surgical endo- crinology, and his team created a non-invasive screening test for neuroendocrine tumors (NETs) of the gut by using stool samples. The screening test, NETDetectTM, will use DNA extracted from the stool and compare it to known genes associ- ated with NETs. The advantages of this system over other common detection methods such as blood tests and colonoscopies are the reduced cost and elimination of testing prep.This screen- ing kit offers the ability to detect these types of tumors early, and possibly pre-cancerous NETs as well. Drs. Sol Mundinger and Mandi Lopez, both surgeons, designed an improved surgical suture anchor. Surgical suture anchors are designed to connect tendons or ligaments to bone. While highly effective, the current design presents many drawbacks for surgeons. Mundinger and Lopez created the HoldTenTM, a new surgi- cal line fixation device that re-imagines suture anchors and gives surgeons more control over suturing. The HoldTenTM’s design allows sur- geons to adjust the tension on the suture prior to setting it as well as having multiple sutures to one anchor. This minimizes the need to re-drill anchors in bone to achieve desired tension and the need for excess hardware. Its design also per- mits for securing soft tissue to bone, making it a highly versatile surgical suture anchor for many specialties. Surgeon Dr. Ian Hodgdon’s invention improves healing after bowel surgery. Bowel removal sur- geries use enteric stents to help maintain bowel integrity. Hodgdon created an absorbable stent for the gut that is made of biologicmaterials that have already been successfully used in eye and hernia repairs.This stent will absorb leaking con- tents from the bowel as it heals, and will eventu- ally be degraded by gut enzymes effectively pro- moting stronger repair by encouraging healing and regrowth of the existing tissue around the biologic material framework. “I’m thrilled that so many LSU Health New Orleans LIFT2grant proposals were selected for funding,” notes Patrick Reed, RTTP, director of technology management at LSU Health New Orleans.“Of particular interest tomy office is the number of physician-inventors who submitted and received an award. We have recently seen a sharp increase inmedical device-related innova- tion from the clinical side of our institution, and I’mhopeful the trend will continue.We appreciate LSU’s foresight in creating amechanismby which