Explore UAB

Pictured Above: Kellie Flood, MD; Vicki Nelson, MSN, RN; Seth Landefeld, MD; Katrina Booth, MD (ACE Unit Medical Director); and Terri Middlebrooks, RN.Alabama’s first Acute Care for Elders (ACE) Unit celebrates its tenth year at UAB! The ACE Unit utilizes an interdisciplinary care team trained in geriatrics to provide acutely ill older adults with holistic care of the highest quality. Promoting health, preventing complications, optimizing function and preserving dignity are all important components of the Unit’s mission. Happy 10^th Birthday to the team that makes ACE amazing!

Jim Johnson, MD, is able to listen to patients remotely via high-performance electronic stethoscope.Thanks to the new Tele-ICU initiative led by Steve Stigler, MD (Assistant Professor) and Jim Johnson, MD (Professor) in Pulmonary, Allergy and Critical Care, patients in the Intensive Care Unit at Vaughan Regional Medical Center in Selma can be remotely monitored and treated by UAB physicians. Using a secure internet connection and digital diagnostic tools such as the electronic stethoscope, UAB pulmonologists will operate the Tele-ICU service 24/7. They will also train Vaughan’s family medicine residents in critical care medicine. The telemedicine approach is an exciting new means of patient care that is advantageous both for patients and health care providers.

Physicians in the Division of Pulmonary, Allergy and Critical Care launched a new telehealth program on July 2, 2018. The initiative, led by Steve Stigler, MD, and James E. Johnson, MD, will enable UAB physicians to monitor and treat patients in the Intensive Care Unit at Vaughan Regional Medical Center in Selma without leaving the UAB campus.

Jaroslaw Zmijewski, PhD and Victor J. Thannickal, MD (Division Director) have demonstrated that IPF can be reversed with the diabetes drug Metformin.A research team led by Jaroslaw Zmijewski, PhD (Associate Professor) and Victor J. Thannickal, MD (Professor and Director) in Pulmonary, Allergy and Critical Care, has shown for the first time that established lung fibrosis can be reversed using a diabetes drug treatment that targets cell metabolism. Experimental findings using lung tissues from patients with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis and a mouse model of lung fibroblasts have been reported in Nature Medicine in an article entitled “Metformin reverses established lung fibrosis in a bleomycin model in a bleomycin model.”

Dana Rizk, MD (Associate Professor, Nephrology) led research efforts that were published in an article entitled “A Novel Method for Rapid Bedside Measurement of Glomerular Filtration Rate,” that was printed in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology. The new injectable biomarker will potentially allow early detection of kidney damage and possible new therapies.