Medical Student Research Fellowship for Summer 2011

Mentor:           Babu G. Welch, MD 
Department:   Neurosurgery
Room number:  CS5.112
Mail Code:     8855
Phone number:  214-648-8779
E-mail:  babu.welch@utsouthwestern.edu
Project title:    Southwestern Arteriovenous Malformation Registry: AVM Management in the ONYX Era    

Human subjects IRB approved project number (where applicable):      
Animal subjects IRB approved project number (where applicable):      

Project Type (patient-based research, animal-based research, or basic research; this characterization is only to permit a general classification for grouping similar types of projects)

This will be a patient-based research project

Brief Description of Project:  The student will be involved in an ongoing project focused on development of prospective registry of AVM management.  The department of neurosurgery already houses one of the largest databases on aneurysm management in the country and this AVM databases will be an update.  An effort is currently underway to enter and evaluate all patients with AVMs at UTSW from 2005-2010.  This is an important time period due to the introduction of a new agent, ONYX, for the endovascular management of these lesions.  Simultaneously, prospective data entry has occurred since the fall of 2010.

The student will be involved in reconciling the patients from both medical charts and from the EMR.  The optimal student will have a grasp of comma separated value databases (Access, Excel).  It is conceivable that all data will be reconciled in the first month of the students involvement so that peer review literature can be produced during the summer period based on a review of the data collected.  As a part of the cerebrovascular neurosurgery service, the student will also be exposed to clinical management of complex cerebrovascular patients.

Previous Research Activities or Publications with Medical Students:

Summer 2010: Mr. Micheal Montoya (Wake Forest Univ) participated in the evaluation of the use of platelet aggregation in neuro-endovascular therapies; a paper is current in process in conjunction with the department of Hematology/Oncology.