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St. E's residents selected for national presentations
By WILLIAM K. ALCORN
YOUNGSTOWN
Research projects of three St. Elizabeth Health Center internal-medicine residents have been selected for presentation at the American College of Physicians’ 2010 national convention.
Drs. Muneer M. Al Zoby and Nanette Chua will present the results of their study of a new anti-hypertension drug; and Dr. Myreen E. Tomas will present her project on a sleep disorder. The ACP meeting is April 22-24 in Toronto, Ontario.
The honorees’ three-year residencies will be completed in June.
Being invited to show their work at the national convention is a significant honor, said Dr. Thomas Marnejon, program director of the Internal Medicine Residency program at St. Elizabeth.
Drs. Al Zoby and Chua are co-researchers of a paper, “Efficacy of Aliskiren as an Additive Anti-Hypertensive Drug.” Their work has been entered into the Associate Research Paper Competition at the convention.
Dr. Tomas’ project, “REM [rapid eye movement] Behavior Sleep Disorder Presenting As Acute Agitation” has been selected as a poster finalist.
At the convention, the residents’ projects are displayed in poster form and judged by a panel of physicians. They give brief oral presentations and may be asked questions, on which they are also judged, Dr. Marnejon said.
In their project, Drs. Chua and Al Zoby reviewed medical records of patients given Aliskiren, a new group of drugs for hypertension (high blood pressure), over an eight-week period. Their goal was to determine how Aliskiren interacts with other hypertension drugs and what side effects it produces.
“We found a significant reduction of patients’ blood pressure after four weeks and that the reduction was maintained during the final four weeks of the testing period,” Dr. Chua said.
Additionally, Drs. Chua and Al Zoby concluded that the drug was safe as an additive drug with other anti-hypertension medications and had no significant side effects.
These are important issues, said Dr. Erdal Sarac, an Internal Medicine Residency faculty member, who provided support for the Aliskiren project.
Dr. Sarac said many patients with hypertension don’t have control of their high blood pressure, even with multiple medications, and Aliskiren provides another tool.
Also, he said, a major reason people don’t take blood-pressure medicine are the side effects, and Aliskiren is “well tolerated.”
Dr. Al Zoby, 35, is a graduate of Aleppo University Medical School in Syria. He and his wife, Noor, have two daughters, age 5 and 2. His immediate plan is to be a hospitalist in Kentucky. In the future, he said he will seek a fellowship in endrochrinology.
“I’m very interested in research, and being invited to the convention gives real exposure. It is a dream when you see your dreams come true,” he said.
Dr. Chua, 32, originally from the Philippines, is a 2007 graduate of the College of Medicine of the University of the East Ramon Magsaysay Memorial Medical Center in the Philippines. Her parents live in California where she plans to return and open a primary-care physician practice.
Dr. Tomas’ paper was inspired by a case she worked on while doing the intensive-care portion of her residency. Dr. Alan Cropp, also a member of the Internal Medicine Residency faculty, provided support for Dr. Tomas’ project.
The case involved an elderly male patient who kicked and bit nurses in his sleep because he was dreaming he was being attacked. The dreams were the result of a disorder called REM Behavior Sleep, Dr. Tomas said.
The purpose of the research project was to make health-care professionals and the general public more aware of the condition, and that it is treatable with medication, she said.
Dr. Tomas, 28, was born in Cleveland but later moved to the Philippines where she graduated in 2005 from the Medical School of the University of Santo Tomas. Now living in New Jersey, she has dual citizenship in the United States and the Philippines. She plans to seek a fellowship in infectious diseases.
Obviously, their research was considered unusual or important enough to be presented at the national convention, Dr. Cropp said.
“We are all very proud of these residents,” he said.