The Statesman 10-16-17

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Monday, October 16, 2017

Volume LXI, Issue 7

sbstatesman.com

Can e-mental health tools aid astronauts?

By Charles Scott Contributing Writer

ARACELY JIMENEZ / THE STATESMAN

Students cheer on the Stony Brook Seawolves during the football team's annual homecoming game on Saturday, Oct. 14. The Seawolves beat the UNH Wildcats 38-24.

SB Southampton Hospital introduces new cardiac catheterization lab

By Lisseth Aguilar Contributing Writer

One of the most recent developments to come out of Stony Brook Southampton Hospital is the cardiac catheterization laboratory that opened on Sept. 5, making it the first of its kind on Long Island. Donated by Audrey and Martin Gruss, a prominent philanthropic East End couple, this facility will provide critically-ill heart patients with services that include angioplasty, stenting, intravascular ultrasound and Impella, a treatment designed to improve blood flow in heart failure patients who require care in the lab. “When I arrived at Stony Brook seven years ago, I learned of a report made by The Berger Commission, a state sponsored look at health care in New York,” Dr. Kenneth Kaushansky, senior vice president of health sciences and dean of the Stony

Brook University School of Medicine, said in an email. “The report indicated that the East End of Long Island ought to organize into a network with Stony Brook to lead and coordinate care.” The laboratory, born out of a merge between Stony Brook Medicine and Southampton Hospital on Aug. 1, gives East End residents access to highly specialized care, something that their towns lacked before, Kaushansky said. “By affiliating with Stony Brook, the people of [the] South Fork now have immediate access to our specialists with seamless transfer of their healthcare data and recommendations.” Before the affiliation was finalized, patients had to travel to Stony Brook University Hospital for services. Located up to 70 miles from most communities on the East End, getting to and from the hospital made access-

MANJU SHIVACHARAN / STATESMAN FILE

The cardiac catheterization laboratory at Stony Brook Southampton Hospital gives residents access to care.

ing quality, specialized healthcare a challenge. “With the population growth eastward on Long Island, traditionally, these services were only provided at Stony Brook University Hospital itself,” Dr. Travis Bench, director of the Cardiac Catheterization Lab at Stony Brook Southampton Hospital, said in a video detailing the lab’s features. According to Bench, heart attack patients who were brought to Southampton Hospital before the merge would have been transferred to Stony Brook University Hospital to be treated since they had the technology to do so. “If someone were to present here with a heart attack they would be required to be transferred back to that facility for their care,” he said. Now equipped with the necessary technology to treat patients in Southampton, doctors are able to minimize the amount of heart damage done without the added steps of having to transport patients to Stony Brook. Doctors can now perform percutaneous coronary interventions, or PCIs, which are non-surgical procedures in which physicians insert catheters through the skin to reach affected structures under both emergency and elective cases. Another technology provided by the new lab is a fluoroscopy arm, or mobile x-ray arm. The arm allows physicians to visualize coronary arteries during the PCI procedure. Also newly introduced, are highly specialized computer capabilities that measure pressure inside the chambers of the heart and lungs. Continued on page 4

News

Arts & Entertainment

NASA-funded researchers investigate myCompass.

Take a look at some of the best photos from Wolfstock.

Clinical trial looks at astronauts’ health.

MORE ON PAGE 4

NASA-funded researchers at Stony Brook University are assessing applications of e-mental health tools in managing depression, anxiety and stress for astronauts and astronaut-like individuals. Under the leadership of Dr. Adam Gonzalez, principal investigator and founding director of the Mind-Body Clinical Research Center, psychiatric researchers at Stony Brook are conducting a clinical trial to determine the effectiveness of myCompass, a self-help tool created by the Australian Black Dog Institute, an organization founded in 2002 dedicated to widespread treatment of mental illness and psychiatric research.

“The project is working to determine the effectiveness of selfhelp, internet-based intervention for stress and anxiety among high achieving adults,” Juan Hernandez, project coordinator for the study, said. “We’re looking at whether text-based support from a licensed clinician or a video messaging support system is going to be the most beneficial against a treatment-as-usual condition.” A goal of the study is to determine how effective e-mental health would be for astronauts. The clinical trial will recruit from high-achieving adults who are astronaut-like, in that they are similar to astronauts in terms of education, health and stress levels, and those who work Continued on page 4

Acclaimed cellist and professor, Colin Carr, to play at Staller Center

CHAMBER MUSIC OC/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS VIA CC BY-SA 4.0

Carr started playing the cello at 5 years old. At age 8, he enrolled in the Yehudi Menuhin School in England. By Brianne Ledda Contributing Writer

World-renowned cellist and Stony Brook professor of music, cello and chamber music, Colin Carr, has his name plastered across a screen outside the university’s Staller Center for the Arts. Every few minutes, the screen flashes an advertisement of Carr’s upcoming concert, a Bach extravaganza, scheduled for Saturday, Oct. 21. Carr, who will be playing the Bach suites, compared preparing for the concert to training for a marathon. “It’s impossible, it’s unthinkable to play this concert without the kind Opinions

of advance preparation that’s comparable to what you do when you’re running,” he said. “You need to do more and more, and then more and more, and then you’re there, but you can’t go out and just run a marathon. It just doesn’t work.” Perry Goldstein, a Stony Brook professor of musicianship, composition and theory, and the chairperson of the university’s department of music, called playing the six cello suites in one evening “an artistic coup.” “These pieces are played by every serious cellist,” he said. Continued on page 4 Sports

Seawolves celebrate Homecoming.

President Stanley gets paid too much.

Football wins homecoming game.

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MORE ON PAGE 9

MORE ON PAGE 11

Lowering his salary could greatly help budget issues.

A 16-point fourth quarter leads to a win over UNH.


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