Advances in Care

For any patient diagnosed with depression for the first time, the recommended course of treatment is the same: a medication like a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), an evidence based psychotherapy, or both. But there is a large group of people for whom these treatments simply won't work. That’s where Dr. Conor Liston and his team focus. His work mapping the brain is helping doctors better understand where depression is impacting certain brain structures and what that means for the symptoms patients present. Dr. Liston’s work is focused on identifying how these symptoms impact patients' brains and using those findings to identify the best treatment approach. It also may eventually help detect the likelihood of depression in patients before they exhibit any symptoms. 

Dr. Christopher Petit is the co-director of the Children's Heart Center at NewYork-Presbyterian Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital and division chief of pediatric cardiology at Columbia University, and… a stubborn optimist. That optimism has made all the difference in his years of treating a rare heart disease in newborns: Pulmonary Vein Stenosis (PVS). Dr. Petit’s determination to better understand and treat PVS has led him and his team to make important breakthroughs in the field, including the use of sirolimus– an immune-targeted medication usually used for cancer treatments– as a systemic oral therapy to treat PVS, as well as the development of a hybrid surgical method for treating patients with severe disease, performed in collaboration with Dr. Emile Bacha. The results: drastically improved survival rates for his patients.

Listen in as science journalist Catherine Price speaks with physicians from Columbia & Weill Cornell Medicine who are pushing the leading edge of clinical research to find solutions for every medical challenge. Whether using robotics to advance minimally invasive surgeries, or finding effective treatments for previously terminal pediatric diseases, these physicians fearlessly take on some of the most complex challenges in medicine today. This spirit of collaboration and innovation is the hallmark of NewYork-Presbyterian and what makes the institution a top health care provider in the country. 

Heart failure impacts more than 8 million people in the United States today, but with the right treatments, the course of the disease can be corrected. Dr. Nir Uriel is determined to do just that. He’s spent his career pushing forward advancements to better diagnose and treat advanced heart failure patients. These advancements include a new, magnetic levitated pump that can improve the outcomes of patients denied transplantation due to their age or severity of disease, as well as breakthrough testing that analyzes cell-free DNA to detect transplant rejection, changing the course of immunosuppressive therapy. Dr. Uriel is also pioneering the use of technology to remotely monitor heart failure patients, and diagnose heart failure before symptoms even occur. In this episode, Dr. Uriel details his multifaceted methods to treating heart failure, the value of a team approach, and the importance of empathetic, patient-centered care.

After establishing that neurological gene therapy can help address brain cells damaged by Parkinson’s, Dr. Michael Kaplitt and his team have set their sights on a new mission: preventative intervention. For patients with an inherited form of Parkinson’s caused by a GBA gene mutation, Dr. Kaplitt and his colleagues are working to deliver genes that can stop the degeneration of damaged braincells, as well as initiating the use of focused ultrasound to treat essential tremors. In this episode, Dr. Kaplitt details the mechanisms of his work and the advancements he’s working on today.

In the United States today, there are over 110,000 people waiting for an organ transplant. And, Dr. Sandip Kapur says, 92% of those patients are waiting for a kidney. In this episode, Dr. Kapur describes a simple philosophy that helped guide Weill Cornell Medicine into one of the top kidney transplantation centers in the nation: offer the maximum amount of opportunities to transplantation that could exist. That means working with multidisciplinary teams to innovate every step of the kidney transplantation process– from making donor surgeries minimally invasive, to matching donors and recipients in new ways through the National Kidney Registry, and even pioneering research into immunotherapy, to improve success rates and patients’ quality of life post-surgery.

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Whether a patient will ultimately recover from an unconscious state after brain injury isn’t easy to predict– yet. But Dr. Jan Claassen is working to change that. He describes the staggering revelations of his study on Cognitive Motor Dissociation, and how his team used a combination of widely available diagnostic tools and open source machine learning algorithms, to detect signs of consciousness in seemingly unconscious patients. Dr. Claassen also discusses his ongoing RECONFIG study, in which he hopes to refine tools that could predict the likelihood of recovery in patients following brain injury. 

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Inspired by her beloved aunt, Dr. Onyinye Balogun began her medical career with a mission in mind: to mitigate the suffering that people with cancer experience over the course of their life-saving treatments. Her approach has been multi-faceted and systematic. After being awarded New York Genome Center’s Polyethnic-1000 grant, Dr Balogun has led the investigation into potential genomic mutations that could be contributing to the disproportionate rates of uterine cancer diagnoses in Black women. Meanwhile, Dr. Balogun is also partnering with her former patient to update the outmoded and painful brachytherapy devices used in cervical cancer treatments. 

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When her own experience with a complicated pregnancy reignited an interest in medicine and science, Dr. Lauren Osborne left her career in publishing to pursue medical school. Now a reproductive psychiatrist, Dr. Osborne leads the way in researching the connection between immune system dysregulation, stress reactivity, and the role of allopregnanolone in mood and anxiety disorders, particularly in pregnant and postpartum women. In this episode, she discusses how her expansive research is getting us one step closer to decoding perinatal mood disorders, and she calls for increased training in reproductive psychiatry to help OBGYNs better treat their patients. 

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Clinical psychologists Dr. Anne Marie Albano and Dr. Shannon Bennett are no strangers to the trials of social anxiety, both citing formative experiences in their youth that have shaped their careers. With decades of combined experience in the field, the two have contributed to the gold standard for treatment of anxious youth using cognitive behavioral therapies. Dr. Albano and Dr. Bennett share details on the proven effectiveness of treating parents alongside children, as well as incorporating immersive group therapy. They discuss how well-meaning but overprotective parenting can create further avoidant tendencies in children and young adults, and they explore the neuroscience that confirms how adolescent treatment for anxiety differs from that of young children or adults. 

For more information visit nyp.org/Advances