Researchers at VUMC, including Department of Medicine Allergy, Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine Drs. Matthew Stier, Julie Bastarache and Lorraine Ware, recently reported in Nature Immunology that metabolic changes that "rewire" part of the immune system can intensify sepsis.
The Vanderbilt Transplant Center (VTC) performed 960 solid organ transplants in 2025, the most ever completed by a single center in one year in the United States.
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.
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.
E. Wesley Ely, MD, MPH, a physician-scientist at VUMC whose research has helped establish delirium as an important risk factor for long-term brain dysfunction in critically ill patients, has been invested as a member in the American Academy of Sciences and Letters.
Three Department of Medicine faculty are among the recent cohort of Vanderbilt University Innovation Catalyst Fund award recipients. They are: Scott McCall, MD, PhD (Allergy, Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine), Sahar Takkouche, MD (Diabetes, Endocrinology and Metabolism), Chase Webber, MD (General Internal Medicine and Public Health).
According to research recently published in Frontiers in Immunology by Jacek Hawiger, MD, PhD (Allergy, Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine), and colleagues, a “peptide genomic therapy” given in combination with an antibiotic nearly doubles survival rates from sepsis in an animal model, compared to treatment with antibiotic alone.
