WBAMC hosts annual Research Day
Dr. Sara Gilliam, Ph.D., research psychologist for the Department of Behavioral Health at William Beaumont Army Medical Center, goes over conclusions of her presentation on the restoration of Soldiers suffering from different stages of mental exhaustion aggravated by post-traumatic stress disorder. Photo by Clarence Giles Monitor Staff.
Clarence Giles,
Monitor Staff:
William Beaumont Army Medical Center’s 25th annual Research Day saw 10 presenters offer topics ranging from exploration and application of medicinal properties of plants to the treatment of bone inflammation in rats with antibiotic powder as a model for human applications.
“Residents, interns and members of all core departments are giving presentations on research activities that occurred in the last year,” said Dr. Ney Gore, chief of the Department of Clinical Investigations at WBAMC. “Part of it is to support the graduate medical exchange program we have, in which participating interns in areas such as orthopedics, general surgery, internal medicine and an oral maxillofacial program.”
Gore said the event also yielded overall benefits, such as giving an organization opportunity to review their performance from the previous year.
“What that does for doctors and other staff, in attendance, is provide them with ideas for alternate conceptual approaches to topics presented,” said Gore. “It’s a colloquium, […] an exchange of views that brings people together, sharing new ideas and learning new ways to think about them.”
The focus of Dr. Sara Gilliam’s presentation followed that example well.
“The exploratory study I presented today was based on data collected at the Restoration and Resilience Center at Fort Bliss. The R&R Center’s primary mission is to restore healthy functioning and battle-readiness to Soldiers affected by post-traumatic stress disorder,” Gilliam said.
Capt. Brendan McCriskin presented a paper on the investigation of the comparative effectiveness of tissue engineered for the reconstruction of bone for Soldiers wounded in combat. The research, in its first year, will continue for another two years before the team can make conclusive statements. Photo by Clarence Giles, Monitor Staff.
The six-month program is unique in that it utilizes complementary alternative medicine modalities in addition to standard therapy. The CAM modalities include reiki, acupuncture, massage therapy, biofeedback, neuro-feedback, movement therapy, meditation and art therapy.
Gilliam lauds the R&R Center as a PTSD researcher’s dream.
“Research at this center can lead to improvements in the diagnosis and treatment of PTSD. One issue in treating it is the overlapping symptoms of disease with mild traumatic brain injury or concussion,” she said. She said the issue is difficult to solve because it is not known whether treatment for combat stress-related conditions provide mental health gains for Soldiers with history of mTBI.
Gilliam also pointed out 5 percent of 2,500 Soldiers recently surveyed by Walter Reed Army Institute of Research said they had concussions in which they lost consciousness during combat. Forty-four percent of these Soldiers were eventually co-diagnosed with combat stress. She also pointed out symptoms normally associated with concussion – headaches, dizziness, irritability and memory problems – were also related to traumatic stress.
“Currently, a diagnostic tool to differentiate traumatic stress disorder from mTBI or gauge the functional benefits in treating one over the other does not exist. Soldiers with mTBI may refuse to seek help because they recognize the symptoms as related to the stigmatized diagnosis of PTSD,” she said. “New methods of measuring are needed to differentiate PTSD from mTBI.”
She believes the solution may come from the fields of cognitive psychology and linguistics.
“Psychological disorders have long been associated with distinctive patterns of communication,” she said. “An individual’s thoughts, feelings and mental status are reflected in their speech and language. With the advent of improved natural language processing programs, it has become feasible to develop automated techniques to monitor individual speech and language patterns to identify potential mental health disorders.
“My study was an exploration of the feasibility of detecting language patterns that may reflect PTSD and potentially permit the development of low-cost ways to measure that can automatically, accurately and unobtrusively identify individuals’ affected by PTSD only, PTSD and mTBI or mTBI only,” Gilliam continued. “The results of the exploratory study presented today are promising.”
Unlike Gilliam, who deals in the abstract, Capt. Brendan McCriskin, a soon-to-be second year resident in orthopedic surgery at WBAMC, prefers to solve problems with his hands.
“It allows the opportunity to definitively fix things that are broken, in a very active population like athletes and Soldiers,” said McCriskin. “To get them back to doing what they were doing before. It’s very fulfilling.”
The majority of his work is directed toward rebuilding or growing new bone in patients who’ve suffered segmental fractures. The fractures are called segmental, because there is usually a large piece of bone missing.
“Getting a bone to heal with a big piece missing is very challenging. And that’s the purpose of the study, to attempt to isolate and concentrate the stem cells from goat bone marrow and implant those stem cells on a ‘biological scaffold,’” he said. “To fill the gaps in the bone we will create a substance. Then we will evaluate the healing of that bone. The research has been underway for a little less than a year at William Beaumont Army Medical Center.”
Currently, the results are not as good as McCriskin would like. There are many challenges with morbidity from the site of the lesion. There can be a rejection reaction if the bone is taken from a cadaver or another site in the patient’s body. There can be problems with an immune reaction. All of these probable occurrences are familiar challenges to the researchers.
This specific project is less than a year old.
McCriskin said his interest in the project was inspired by what he saw while on active duty in Afghanistan, and he had taken care of many Soldiers with these types of injuries. After seeing the difficulty back in the U.S. in the healing of these types of wounds and talking with medical colleagues, he was invited to be the primary investigator on the study.
“After we prove our hypothesis in goats, then I would hope for the eventual transition to humans,” said McCriskin. “This is one of the more exciting projects I’ve been involved in. Many of the patients we take care of are young, in their late teens or early twenties. They are starting life. For them, to begin their life with amputation or multiple amputated limbs, or the limb is not as functional as they would like, is a huge price to pay to our country. And for us to be able to offer them something better, I think is very exciting. And I would hope we’ll be able to do that in the interim.”
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