What You Need to Know
Doctors and medical students at the Neuroscience Institute and the School of Medicine presented their findings and research at the American Academy of Neurology (AAN) annual meeting in Denver, April 13-18, 2024.
Fortunato Battaglia, M.D., Ph.D., professor departments of neurology and medical sciences at the Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine (HMSOM) and Florian Thomas, MD, PhD, founding chair and professor, department of neurology at HMSOM and HUMC presented a poster at the conference. The poster focuses on exploring the relationship between temperament traits, psychological comorbidity, and functional disability assessed in people with multiple sclerosis. The group had developed a tool that included demographic characteristics, the Depression Anxiety Stress Scale (DASS-21), and the Temperament Evaluation of Memphis, Pisa, Paris, and San Diego Autoquestionnaire (TEMPS-A) short form. Functional disability was assessed with the 36-item version WHODAS 2.0. Statistical analyses, including regression models, were used to explore the relationships between these variables. Their findings shed light on the interaction between personality characteristics and disability from MS.
Krupa Pandey, M.D., director of research and the Center for Multiple Sclerosis and Related Conditions at Hackensack University Medical Center and associate professor of neurology at HMSOM was a co-author on a presentation that focused on the effectiveness and safety of utilizing a high efficacy, infusable B cell depleting therapy in Black/African American and Hispanic/Latino people with relapsing multiple sclerosis. Additionally, she presented a poster emphasizing the significance of early detection of vascular malformations in patients presenting with lesions resembling longitudinal extensive myelitis, as treatment paradigms and subsequent outcomes for both are different.
HMSOM fourth-year medical student, Allison Brown together with Mohammed Kananeh, M.D., HUMC neurointensivist and assistant professor of neurology & neurosurgery at HMSOM presented a poster entitled “Le coma dépassé,” detailing a patient with influenza-associated malignant cerebral edema and subsequent brain death. Ms. Brown, an incoming Stanford University neurology resident, was honored with the AAN Roland P. Mackay medical student essay award. She recounts reviewing the patient’s imaging, observing a brain death exam, and speaks to the history of brain death. “If describing the irreversible loss of all functions of the brain could ever be considered clement, I’d prefer a diagnosis of le coma dépassé to ‘death by neurological criteria,’” Brown wrote.