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Escape rooms, bone marrow transplants, foam casts, voice therapy and a new treatment for heart failure—these are some of the most cutting-edge medical developments in Central Ohio, courtesy illustrious, local pioneers in the health care industry. By Kevin Capron
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ILLUSTRATION: GETTY IMAGES/AKINDO
ADVANCING CARE
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PHOTOS: STEPHEN WEBSTER/OHIOHEALTH
Escaping Traditional Learning Models What do you get when you combine puzzles, medical conundrums and fastpaced, learner-focused medical information programming? For OhioHealth, the answer is national recognition for groundbreaking approaches to medical education. OhioHealth’s novel program, an escape room that helps resident physicians practice patient safety concepts, won the 2022 Innovation Award from the Alliance of Independent Academic Medical Centers. The escape room is a thinkerfocused game where participants find clues, solve puzzles and complete activities to attain a projected goal—“escaping” the room in which they are “trapped.” Initially designed for recreation, escape rooms are now used in medical education for team building, teaching technical and non-technical skills, and fueling educational research. When utilized successfully, escape rooms are an inexpensive, high-impact resource for eager learners. “What made OhioHealth’s application stand out was their creative and insightful approach to teaching the next generation of physicians,” AIAMC executive director Kimberly Pierce Burke said in a press release from OhioHealth. “They also proved that award-winning innovation can be quite affordable, as the total cost of materials for the escape room was just $94.75.” On-Site Transplants In March, OhioHealth added a new Blood and Marrow Transplant (BMT) program to its cancer care services, which will be accessible system-wide to patients who meet the requirements. Phase I began on April 4 with the introduction of the outpatient care program; the first transplants are expected to begin this fall. Before the on-site BMT program, OhioHealth sent up to 400 patients annually to other facilities for stem cell transplants and cellular therapy,
An infusion room in OhioHealth’s Blood and Marrow Transplant program space
causing a break in admitted for transplants patient continuity of in October. The program care. “Because patients has close to 100 personare getting older, it’s nel, Efebera says. important that we keep “Everyone coming them here, where they together and giving already know their phytheir own expertise is sician,” says Dr. Yvonne so breathtaking,” she Efebera, medical direcadds. “I’m so glad we tor for the program. have this expertise The number of working together.” Dr. Yvonne Efebera patients with blood disorders and cancers is rising rapidly, Stopping Heart Disease Progression with diagnoses “expected to grow by 9 A heart failure diagnosis is serious percent in the next five years,” Efebera business. “We do not have any drug says. But treatments made possible that can stop disease progression in with the BMT program are helping to heart failure,” says Shyam S. Bansal, improve outcomes. “I see patients assistant professor in the Ohio State when they are diagnosed and they are University College of Medicine’s so sick, asking me if they’re going to Department of Physiology and Cell make it, and then a few months later, Biology. “As a result, 50 percent of they are walking, driving to their treatpatients die within the first five years ment, and going through a transplant,” of diagnosis.” she says. That may soon change, thanks to The BMT program’s clinic and treatresearchers at the college and OSU ment areas are now open, with inpaWexner Medical Center. They’ve protient areas nearing completion, Efebera duced a new drug molecule, patented says. Blood and marrow transplants as OSU-Erb-012, that targets T-cells through the program will use patients’ responsible for inflammation in heart own stem cells, along with chemofailure patients to halt the course of therapy and possibly radiation, to treat the condition. Burwinkel Farms in Butler County cancer. The program’s first patients “When [heart failure reaches] the began the process of collecting stem fourth stage, it becomes a debilitating cells in July and are expected to be disease. A patient is not able to carry SEPTEMBER 2022 COLUMBUS MONTHLY
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A Better Splint for Soldiers Dr. Kevin Martin, associate professor of orthopedics at OSU’s College of Medicine and an orthopedic surgeon at OSU Wexner Medical Center, created a one-step, foam splinting cast, which he calls Fast Cast, that can stabilize an injury in a matter of minutes. The sprayon foam can help prevent fracture motion and possible soft-tissue damage while maintaining longitudinal traction as it accumulates and solidifies. Martin spent more than 20 years as a combat medic in the U.S. Army, caring for soldiers with what he calls devastating foot and ankle injuries. According to his OSUWMC bio, he is “passionate about caring for patients and developing necessary procedures, because lower extremity injuries can be very disabling and painful.” An article from OSU’s College of Medicine explains that Fast Cast could be a game-changer for military personnel with fractures or spinal cord injuries, because stabilizing these injuries for transport to medical facilities is a major hurdle. The spray-on foam can be applied with one hand and can rapidly stabilize itself by expanding to four times its initial size and becoming more solid in about a minute. The material is also buoyant, making it extremely helpful for wounded people who need to be extracted from water.
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Dr. Kevin Martin demonstrates his Fast Cast spray.
The article notes that in testing, Martin and his team saw no failures with Fast Cast, and evaluators ranked the spray foam as safer and more effective than an ordinary splint in stabilizing lower-leg fractures. Martin thinks this research will boost the possibility of receiving funds from the U.S. Department of Defense to explore more foam-like materials and chemical compounds that may be applied to a variety of fractures. Fast Cast also has the potential to be used in athletic or hunting accidents and other civilian situations. Helping Patients Find Their Voice Transgender and nonbinary people are often targets of discrimination, harassment, violence and other issues that can lead to severe mental health problems. To combat these challenges, OSU’s Wexner Medical Center offers comprehensive gender-affirming voice care services that help patients communicate in a way that’s consistent with their gender identity. “It should feel good to talk,” says Anna Lichtenstein, an OSUWMC voice therapist. “I want my patients to feel like they sound like themselves. The voice should feel true to sense of self.” Lichtenstein teaches her clients exercises designed to modify several vocal properties, including airflow, resonance, pitch, range and inflection patterns. The process begins when an otolaryngologist evaluates the patient’s
overall voice, and a surgeon inspects the vocal cords and assesses their vibrational patterns. After the evaluation, the patient receives 10 to 12 weeks of intensive treatment with a voice therapist, like Lichtenstein, who specializes in gender-affirming voice. “A really big part of what voice was for me, personally, was matching the aesthetic goals of gender I was going after,” says Ari Toumpas, an OSU graduate student who worked with Lichtenstein for 12 weeks. “There’s a lot of discomfort and pain there when it comes to dysphoria from voice and congruence with one’s gender, and I have that to a certain extent.” As a grad student, Toumpas teaches Latin classes to students five days a week. “Sixty percent of my work is talking at people,” she says. “Being able to have a voice that I’m comfortable with and that I can use in a healthy way changed my life a lot.” The therapy has had an effect on her social life, too: She notes that being able to comfortably yell a joke to someone across a bar on her birthday in the feminine range she desires was very affirming. “One of the big things about voice therapy or voice modulation for trans people is that it can lead to a lot more safety,” says Toumpas. “You never know who in the world is going to clock you as trans and be violent about it. So I have this comfort and added safety, but I also get to be very playful with my voice.”
PHOTO: JAY LAPRETE PHOTOGRAPHY
their own weight. They are bedridden. … The heart doesn’t even have enough function to supply blood to walk,” says Bansal. “So if we can stop heart failure before it reaches the fourth stage, it can make a huge difference.” When a heart begins to fail, T-cells, part of the immune system, go from defending the body against infection to advancing the disease. In a study of mice with heart failure, OSU researchers discovered that these “bad” T-cells contained elevated amounts of the protein estrogen receptor alpha. They then identified and tested a molecule that activates estrogen receptor beta, which is known to counteract estrogen receptor alpha. “We have tested [the drug] extensively in mice, and now we are in the process of testing it in pigs,” says Bansal. “Once we have received sufficient activity, we can take it further for FDA approval and then start clinical trials [in humans].”
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