Vanderbilt Health has received accreditation from the Intersocietal Accreditation Commission (IAC) in Adult Congenital Transthoracic Echocardiography, joining a select group of organizations.

Eight Department of Medicine faculty are among the 27 new members elected to Vanderbilt University School of Medicine's Academy for Excellence in Clinical Medicine.

Among the patients transplanted this year were 16 children and more than 185 adults, 29 U.S. veterans, and 20 patients who received multiorgan transplants including 16 heart-kidney transplants, two heart-liver transplants and two heart-lung transplants.

Previously the director of the Division of Allergy, Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, she will serve as the 11th chair of the Department of Medicine. Her appointment was effective Jan. 1.

This year, several Department of Medicine faculty were appointed to new positions that will help advance the department and medical center missions.

Annet Kirabo, DVM, MSc, PhD, associate professor of Medicine (Genetic Medicine and Clinical Pharmacology), has been ranked as a 2025 Top Scholar by the global academic analytics platform ScholarGPS.

According to a randomized trail published last week in the New England Journal of Medicine by Allergy, Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine Drs. Jonathan Casey and Matthew Semler, and colleagues, doctors treating seriously ill patients in an emergency room setting may want to give the sedative etomidate, rather than ketamine, when placing a breathing tube. It is the first multicenter trial to demonstrate significant cardiovascular risks of high doses of ketamine (low blood pressure, arrhythmia), side effects that have not been well studied in the past.

The award honors employees across Vanderbilt Health who act with compassion and excellence to provide an exceptional experience for patients and their families, by patients and families.

Jennifer Lewis, MD, Assistant Professor of Medicine, and colleague Lucy Spalluto, MD (Radiology and Radiological Sciences), were recently awarded a $1 million grant from AstraZeneca to understand and improve veteran access to mobile lung cancer screening.

Researchers at VUMC and the University of Calgary have established an analytical framework that integrates genomic, proteomic and electronic health record data to identify cancer risk proteins and therapeutics for cancer prevention. The study, reported Dec. 2 in the American Journal of Human Genetics by co-senior author Xingyi Guo, PhD (Epidemiology), and colleagues, identifies previously unreported protein biomarkers and candidate drug targets across six major cancer types and highlights approved drugs with potential cancer preventive effects.