HJNO Nov/Dec 2022

34 NOV / DEC 2022  I  HEALTHCARE JOURNAL OF NEW ORLEANS   Healthcare Briefs NO Businesses Fill CPR Training Need for Area Schools The American Heart Association of Greater New Orleans collaborated with local sponsors and businesses to fill an urgent CPR training need. They are providing 69 CPR in Schools Training Kits, which will serve more than 50,000 Greater New Orleans area students each year. The kits have 10 mannequins each and are sustainable and reusable, meaning the schools can continue to use them year after year, potentially adding more trained lifesavers to our community. The local American Heart Association, Boysie and Joy Bollinger, and the Ray & Jessica Brandt Family Foundation came together with additional sponsors E.J. and Marjory B. Ourso Family Foundation, Acadian Companies, and InclusivCare to make sure students have the resources they need to fulfill their CPR graduation requirement at no cost to schools. The CPR kits will empower students to learn the core skills of CPR in under 30 minutes, including AED skills and choking relief. Everything teachers need to properly educate students — an instructional video, facilitator’s guide, mannequins and a mannequin pump, knee pads, replacement parts, and sanitizer — is included. “Many of the schools, public and private, throughout Greater New Orleans lack CPR kits for training. COVID-19 created an even more urgent gap for students needing to complete CPR graduation requirements. Additionally, it showed a need for students in lower grades to learn this essential, lifesaving skill as so many of us were homebound. Thanks to the recognition of this need for our community, and the generosity of our local sponsors, tens of thousands of our students will now be able to save a life,” said Coretta LaGarde, executive director, American Heart Association of Greater New Orleans. Each year, more than 350,000 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests occur in the United States, and fewer than half of these people receive the immediate help that they need before professional help arrives. But immediate CPR could double or triple a cardiac arrest victim’s chance of survival. “With more than 70 percent of out-of-hospital cardiac arrests happening in homes, you will most likely be trying to save the life of someone you love—a child, a spouse, a parent, or a friend. Through programs like CPR Kits in Schools, the American Heart Association is working to increase the number of bystanders who use CPR in an emergency,” said LaGarde. In 2014, the American Heart Association helped to pass the Burke Cobb Act, which made it a requirement for all Louisiana high school seniors to learn CPR before graduation. These kits provide schools with the tools they need to teach hands-on CPR skills and gives students the confidence necessary to perform CPR or use an AED, ultimately making our communities safer and empowering youth to save lives. TulaneWorking on Test to Predict COVID-19 Complications Could some of those who died from COVID-19 and other infectious diseases have been saved by a diagnosis that predicts how severe their cases will be and provides timelier treatment? A team of engineers and doctors at Tulane University hopes to answer that question with the development of new technology designed to detect severe COVID-19 complications such as thrombosis, a condition in which blood clots block veins and arteries. “Many patients who died from COVID-19 and other infectious diseases developed severe thrombotic complications shortly after disease symptoms were manifested,” said Damir Khismatullin, PhD, an associate professor of biomedical engineering in the Tulane School of Science and Engineering. “Their lives could be saved by predictive diagnosis of disease severity and timely treatment. However, tests that effectively predict the severity of infectious diseases are not available yet.” Khismatullin and his team recently received a nearly $600,000 Trailblazer Award from the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering to take on research that will lead to such tests. Trailblazer Awards are given to new and early-stage investigators to pursue research programs for which there are minimal or no preliminary data. Khismatullin’s team includes co-investigators from Tulane University School of Medicine, infectious disease specialist Dahlene Fusco, MD, an associate professor, and clinical pathologist Arnaud Drouin, MD, an adjunct assistant professor. The goal is to develop a diagnostic test that uses a drop of blood from a finger prick — a test that could be performed at a hospital, in a clinic, or at home. Many people died from COVID-19 because of the rapid development of complications caused by the so-called immune system-induced cytokine storm during which the body releases too many inflammatory proteins called cytokines into the blood too quickly. Symptoms include high fever, severe fatigue, and sometimes organ failure. A cytokine storm can lead to abnormal blood clotting through the body’s blood vessels. For COVID-19 patients, it can lead to complications that contribute to respiratory difficulties and ultimately cause the patient’s death. CIS Celebrates 39 Years of Cardiovascular Care On Aug. 15, Cardiovascular Institute of the South (CIS) celebrated 39 years of providing cardiovascular care to patients in South Louisiana and Mississippi. Since Craig Walker, MD, started the practice in 1983, CIS has grown to include 21 clinics and 1,150 team members, 65 physicians, nine telecardiology sites, 16 partner hospitals, and management services reaching to the suburbs of Chicago. The practice originated in Houma, expanded to Thibodaux and Morgan City, and then north to Lafayette, Opelousas, and New Iberia. CIS continued to expand to the Baton Rouge and New Orleans areas and opened in Meridian, Mississippi in 2016. CIS now has multiple clinics in Acadiana, the Capital Region, the New Orleans area, and the tri-parish area. CIS treats all aspects of cardiovascular health, with the extensions of the CIS Leg & Vein Center and the CIS Ambulatory Surgery Center in Gray, Louisiana, and by offering services such as a smoking cessation program, intensive cardiac rehab, and a 24/7 Virtual Care Center. On average per month, CIS sees nearly 23,000 patients in clinic and more than 5,000 hospital visits company wide. “When I came to Houma, my thought was to deliver state-of-the-art cardiovascular care in the area where I grew up,” said Walker. “I never dreamed it would have grown to what it is today.”