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December 18, 2008 | 12:00 a.m. CST
Running the course: Dr. Paul Humphrey
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- By Whitney Spivey, Photograph by Jonathan Arner
Dr. Paul Humphrey ran the Dallas White Rock Marathon on Dec. 14, taking his own advice on how to stay healthy and avoid harmful vascular issues. “Folks need to exercise regularly,” he explains. “They need to watch the trans-fats and saturated fats in their diets, and they need to get a lipid profile performed during their college years.”
Unfortunately, some folks just can’t run away varicose veins — the most common condition Humphrey treats among younger patients. Fortunately, Columbia Surgical Associates uses a speedy laser procedure to take care of large varicose veins. Humphrey reports that the 30- to 45-minute in-house procedure is “less painful than going to the dentist’s office.” And it’s certainly less painful than running 26.2 miles — a feat Humphrey has completed seven times. He placed 942 out of 3,878 finishers at Sunday’s marathon with a time of 3:59:58.
The noodle scratcher: Dr. Pradeep Sahota
- By John Conner, Photograph by Truth Leem
Driven by a passion for helping people and by his painful migraines that he yearned to know more about, Dr. Pradeep Sahota of MU is nationally renowned for his work with neurology and sleep disorders.
“Once I got into medicine, neurology was a pretty easy choice,” Sahota says.
“I am a migraine patient, and I remember thinking, ‘My gosh, so many people have this, and we don’t even know what causes it.’” His experiences with migraines continue to push him today.
His studies included stops at the Christian Medical College in his native India and a fellowship at Duke University. In his current work at MU, Sahota has helped advance the field of neurology by helping discover that sleep apnea is one of the causes of strokes.
Sahota, chairman of the Sleep Disorders Center, works in the neurology clinic two to three days a week and teaches students all he can about neurology and its complexities. He hopes he can pass on his values to a new generation of physicians.
Baby love: Dr. Randall Floyd
- By Annie Meredith, Photograph by Mike Pittmann
On the wall of Dr. Randall Floyd’s office at Columbia Regional Hospital hangs a bulletin board covered with pictures of healthy babies and letters of thanks from joyous mothers. He refers to these mementos as his most rewarding stories and says there is a tale behind each. Floyd’s interest in maternal and fetal medicine began with ultrasound. “It was the modality of looking inside a human body without cutting it open that interested me.”
Floyd attended the University of Kentucky-Lexington Medical School. He completed his residency at the Naval Hospital in Oakland, Calif., where he specialized in obstetrics and gynecology. But it was his interest in taking care of women and helping them deliver healthy babies that led him back to school to complete a fellowship at the University of Mississippi Medical Center. He began practicing in 1992 by assisting mothers with health conditions that affect their pregnancies.
For Floyd, it isn’t honors or awards that make his work worthwhile but rather the images and sentiments that remind him of what he believes is his most significant achievement. “It’s the ability to do something to make a difference in one of the most important parts of a patient’s life,” he says.
Miles traveled, miles to go: Dr. Judith Miles
- By Carly Toyzan, Photograph by Christy Siebert
For many children, the greatest challenges at school are passing math or writing English papers. For autistic children, the road follows an even steeper hill, so for their physicians, some of the proudest moments are when they help patients reach milestones.
“A lot of what we do in genetics and autism is not giving someone a pill to make them better,” Dr. Judith Miles says. Instead, she and her colleagues help patients through diagnosis, neuropsychological evaluation, psychotherapy, family training, behavior intervention, occupational therapy and other treatments. The first William S. Thompson Chair in Autism Research and a much-honored MU professor of pediatrics and pathology, Miles has been working with autism and genetics for more than 30 years.
She says the most rewarding part of her job is meeting with patients one-on-one. “People think of pediatrics as just taking care of kids,” she says. “The kids are sort of the icing on the cake. The young families are great to work with.” Miles also contributes to her field by giving lectures at medical schools around the nation; serving on committees, such as the American Academy of Pediatrics, Section on Genetics and Birth Defects and the Missouri Newborn Screening Committee; and conducting research, including a current study that examines genetic factors associated with autism spectrum disorder. Today, Miles’ new goal is to bring young people into the field so they, too, can help make the difficult climb easier for autistic patients.
Emergency room reality: Dr. John Yanos
- By Nora Barak, Photograph by Erik Shookman
The life of an emergency room doctor can be discouraging at times. On any given day Dr. John Yanos’ patients could include a child with a fever to an adult with a stab wound. Being exposed to tragedy on a regular basis, Yanos has had no choice but to develop a thick skin.
“You do tend to get used to the unpleasantness of the job over time, just like I think is true with everything,” he says. “It’s my job, and I try to do my job well. It’s not a religious mission.”
Through his daily shifts, a consistent flow of patients keeps Yanos busy; the university emergency room sees approximately 100 people during each shift.
Despite the demanding nature of his work, Yanos, also a professor, finds motivation through his students. “In teaching jobs you have to stay good at what you’re doing, and you have to be up-to-date,” he says. Yanos is a model for his own advice. He has won 26 medical and teaching awards in his 26 years in medicine — decades of accomplishments in a field as difficult as it is rewarding.
Drawn to the heart: Dr. Anthony Spaedy
-By Elise Catchings, Photograph by Jonathan Arner
Dr. Anthony Spaedy says almost 90 percent of heart disease is preventable. “It just takes serious motivation,” he says. Spaedy’s motivation to become a cardiologist came from the satisfaction that the job provides.
“When I was an intern, I realized that the sicker people, like in intensive care units, seemed to challenge me the most,” Spaedy says. “I really got a charge out of taking care of people with heart attacks or who were really sick and needed something done right away.”
A cardiologist at the Missouri Heart Center and father of four, 45-year-old Spaedy says practicing in Columbia for the past 15 years has given him the best of both worlds. “It’s big enough to support the kind of work I want to do, but it’s small enough that you feel like you’re taking care of friends and family and acquaintances all day long.”
Averaging 65 patients per week in the clinic and 12 to 15 per day in the hospital, Spaedy says his work environment and co-workers make his job fun. “Everybody seems to have a lot of respect for each other,” he says. “But on the other hand, they know that laughter is a good medicine, too.”
For love of the game: Dr. Mark Adams
- By Rachel Duff, Photograph by James Ostler
For Dr. Mark Adams, a sports medicine and orthopedics specialist, the most challenging and rewarding experiences of his career have been the moments he has spent working with female athletes. There aren’t a lot of professional teams for them, and Adams enjoys that women play for the love of the game.
After encouragement, he applied and was selected to be an Olympic physician for the U.S. women’s soccer team in 1996. A year earlier, the women were playing in front of a few thousand. Three years later, he watched in amazement as they played for 90,125 people and won the 1999 World Cup. By the 2000 Olympics, that growing interest in the game continued to surprise him. As team physician, he most often mended the players’ torn ACLs but also worked with shoulders and ankles.
Although working with the national soccer team is a prestigious accomplishment, Adams most enjoys watching athletes grow up, apply their skills from the field and become leaders in their own communities. That’s the best part about being a doctor, he says.
Adams is currently a university team physician for the MU soccer, volleyball and football teams. Through his affiliation with the Columbia Orthopaedic Group and MU, he now keeps his career close to home without long stretches away from his family. He envisions living in Columbia for a long time. “Columbia,” he says, “is the epicenter of my world.”
The center of the circle of life: Dr. Steven Zweig
- By Calvin Miller, Photograph by James Ostler
After Dr. Steven Zweig graduated from MU’s School of Medicine in 1979, he pursued his residency while waiting for his wife-to-be, Dr. Susan Even, to graduate a year later. The two decided to stay in Columbia, and Zweig established a practice in family medicine. Seeing patients since 1979 has given him nearly 30 years of experience. “There’s a value in that, and it’s really hard to explain to young physicians and medical students,” he says.
Zweig has treated and delivered newborn babies and helped to set up a geriatric assessment clinic while on the faculty of MU’s Department of Family Medicine. Now, he serves as the interim chair of the department and has been a hospice director for the past 10 years. Zweig has maintained his role as a family physician while learning about and working in other medical specialties to better understand the entire cycle of life.
“The people I have felt closest to as a physician have been the pregnant women and their kids that I’ve helped deliver and also chronically ill older people who have multiple problems,” Zweig says. “Those are two important bookends in life: pregnancy, birth and early development, then decline and death. Being able to look at life with that perspective has been a very satisfying part of my career.”
Going long to treat diabetes: Dr. Bert Bachrach
- By Lindsay Eanet, Photograph by Mary Minchew
The first things patients who walk into Dr. Bert Bachrach’s office at University Hospital notice are sports memorabilia hung on walls and adorning shelves. Bachrach, a pediatric endocrinologist and a Massachusetts native, fell in love with Tiger football after coming to work at University Hospital. Among the prizes in his collection include a newspaper article about a football game from 1897 and a football player doll from the 1930s.
Bachrach’s love of sports applies to his medical philosophy. He believes treating diabetes is a team effort and urges parents to be an active part of their child’s care.
Bachrach, 47, chose to work in pediatric endocrinology because he can have an impact on the health of patients. “With technological advances like insulin, you can take a disease that would have been a death sentence and make clear improvements in a child’s life,” he says.
He says his job sometimes extends beyond the typical role of a pediatric professional. Some of his patients are children in foster care, so he and his staff assume the role of a surrogate family, often the only regular adult figures in the lives of these children.
A clean cut: Dr. Walter Peters
- By Jane Kellogg, Photograph by James Ostler
In the past 20 years, Dr. Walter Peters has performed surgery on more than 10,000 people, but he can’t exactly say that he’s a hands-on doctor, at least not while his patient is under anesthesia. In 1991, Peters introduced laparoscopic surgery to mid-Missouri and has been working through a laparoscopic lens in Columbia ever since.
The method allows surgeons to view projections of internal organs and perform surgical procedures. This minimally invasive substitution for older surgical techniques allows patients to recover faster, have less pain and be hospitalized for shorter periods of time. “We’re not cutting corners,” Peters explains. In the late 1990s, the method was proved by a series of medical studies to be just as effective as traditional surgery for treating cancer.
The biggest part of his practice is colon surgery; as a general surgeon, he also performs hernia and gallbladder surgery, gastric banding surgery and a variety of other primarily abdominal procedures.
Although a variety of things have changed in the operating room, he says there is one thing that has not: quality of care. Peters says, “Patients here in Columbia can get care as good as you can get at any major medical center in the country.”
Master juggler: Dr. Susan Winkelmann
- By Jessi Wood, Photograph by Kayla Bowcutt
One step into her office, and it is obvious that family is an important aspect of Dr. Susan Winkelmann’s life, both in her career and personally. Her desk is covered with photos of her family, photos of love that provide memories and a reminder of the struggles she faced getting to where she is today. In 1986, Winkelmann became the first female in her program to have a child during residency. Winkelmann says she has constantly had to fight to manage family and work at the same time.
Although she planned to go into family medicine, she went through an obstetrics rotation during her third year, and it clicked. “I loved every aspect of it,” she says. Now her challenge is finding balance. “My hardest struggle is feeling like I have the time I want with my family and with my career.” Taking Mondays off to catch up on things around the house buys her more time on weekends and weeknights with her family.
She is still able to do what she finds most fulfilling in her career: following patients through marriage and childbirth. “When couples have a baby, that’s one of their happiest moments,” she says. “And you get to experience that day in and
day out.”
Leading the fight against skin disease: Dr. Karen Edison
- By Andrew Harman, Photograph by Jonathan Arner
Due to a national dermatologist shortage, 41 percent of Americans live without significant access to dermatological care. However, Dr. Karen Edison, a dermatologist at University Hospital and chairman of the MU Department of Dermatology, is trying to change that in Columbia.
Completing both medical school and her residency at MU, Edison is familiar with the dermatological problems facing Missourians. “When I started, treating skin cancer was about one-third of the work we did; it is now up to one-half.”
To combat these problems, Edison and other dermatologists at University Hospital are using technology such as lasers and telemedicine, which allow doctors to examine patients via television. “Missouri is on the forefront of telemedicine,” Edison says. “Every week on Thursday mornings I see patients from all over Missouri. It is so good for patients who can’t leave their homes or are busy with kids and work.”
Laser technology, now used to remove birthmarks and sun damage, allows dermatologists to replace out-of-date and invasive surgical practices. Now people who once could not receive care or did not want to endure what Edison hopes will one day be considered barbaric treatments can receive top care.
Hearing the signs: Dr. Paul Dale
- By Lindsay Eanet, Photograph by James Ostler
Dr. Paul Dale came to the cold Midwest from sunny Macon, Ga. He immediately noticed something was missing at University Hospital, and it wasn’t the warm weather.
“When I came here, one thing I thought was lacking was a comprehensive breast health center where a woman could go in having a lump in her breast and come out knowing exactly what that is and what her treatment options were,” Dale says.
Dale is now the director of the Margaret Proctor Mulligan Breast Health and Research Program at Ellis Fischel Cancer Center, a program he helped establish. He has since collaborated with the schools of medicine, engineering and even journalism on the program’s research. “One of the most impressive things I found was the level of collaboration among the basic scientists and the doctors and even among the different schools at the university,” Dale says.
One of Dale’s more exciting projects is research on photo-acoustic-detection techniques to diagnose cancer. The process consists of shining a laser at a group of cells, and if the cells emit a certain sound, they are cancerous. He is also trying to determine whether the calcification patterns that appear on mammograms can also be used to detect if a woman is at a higher risk for diabetes, stroke and heart disease.
Dale could be considered a people person. In addition to enjoying the collaborative nature of the hospital, Dale says he enjoys the long-term relationships he establishes with patients as they go on to become cancer survivors. “It’s not like we fix a hernia, and they don’t come see me anymore,” Dale says.
Empowering patients: Dr. Ramesh Khanna
- By Julie Heidbreder, Photograph by Chelsea Goodwin
Thirty years ago, Dr. Ramesh Khanna was a young trainee working on peritoneal dialysis clinical trials in Toronto when Time magazine published a picture of the first patient in Columbia to receive this treatment. Just a few years later, Dr. Karl Nolph, a pioneer of this specialty working out of MU, asked Khanna to join his team.
For Khanna, these were unknown and exciting times. “We had nothing to go by,” he says. “It was our own instinct and our own judgment.”
Peritoneal dialysis is a type of kidney replacement therapy patients perform in their own homes by entering a solution into the abdominal cavity via a catheter. Like normal kidneys do, this solution cleans the blood and removes waste and extra fluid so they can be drained. This, Khanna says, eliminates the need for patients to go to the hospital where they might spend several hours of their day waiting to be treated.
Some half a million patients have benefited from this procedure. “The greatest feeling for the patient is that they are the master of their own treatment,” Khanna says. “It is so rewarding to see a smile on the faces of these individuals, and this I consider the most satisfying thing for me as a physician.”
Role model: Dr. Holly Bondurant
- By Rebecca Legel, Photograph by Erik Shookman
When Dr. Holly Bondurant began clinical work in medical school at MU, she discovered what she really wanted to do: pediatrics.
“It was just the happiest part of medicine,” she says. “You were called to the ER at 2 a.m., and you thought, ‘I’m tired; this is hard.’ But when you walked up and saw a child, all of those thoughts went away. You just wanted to take care of the child.”
As a pediatrician, a majority of her daily work is checkups and discussions with children and teens about healthy behaviors.
She encourages her patients to be physically fit. “The kids know I run, and they always want to come to talk to me about their fitness,” says Bondurant, who has completed marathons in Chicago,
Dallas, Boston and at Disney World. “I think it’s fun trying to be a role model for being healthy.”
With two children of her own, Bondurant knows how hard parenting can be. In practice, she uses her own experiences to help others. “Being a pediatrician does not make me a better mother,” she says. “But being a mother makes me a better pediatrician.”
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Dr. Yano's is the best!
Posted by Bo CoMo on Dec 18, 2008 at 10:57 a.m. (Report Comment)