Research Introduction

Brief Introduction to Departmental Research Efforts

Research faculty in the Department of Anesthesiology are conducting wide-spread investigations in several areas of interest. Below is a small sample of current projects.

The Department of Anesthesiology is composed of 45 faculty and has an association or partnership with 14 departments, divisions or institutions involved in biomedical research ranging from animal models of disease for vascular, peripheral vascular, artherosclerosis, heart failure/bio-impedance and inflammatory bowel disease to preconditioning in humans with supportive animal studies ongoing. It is also conducting ischemic spinal cord injury studies in thoracic aortic aneurysm patients and animal models. The Department's completion of a wireless telemetry informatics suite (operating room model) enables the system to be used in the new OSU Richard M. Ross Heart Hospital. This telemetry informatics suite includes high-security military grade encryption and the implementation of the Microsoft.New Web Services. The success of the project is such that Microsoft has decided to showcase this work in The Ohio State University Medical Center on an international level.

Areas of Ongoing Research

Although the Department of Anesthesiology is involved in many clinical studies of investigational drugs, medical monitoring devices, clinical techniques and biomedical mechanisms in all areas of this discipline, many of its research projects involve the causes of cardiovascular disease:

Following several lines of research we are investigating system response during disease states by purine receptors and C-reactive proteins.
Myocardial Impedance Device, invented by our department, allows real-time assessment of myocardial ischemia and graft viability. This simple, minimally invasive device is capable of determining changes in ischemia in a single minute and has already been used to test graft viability prior to the end of surgery avoiding serious cardiovascular complications and improving patient safety and recovery while reducing the incidence of repeat surgeries due to ineffective grafts. We are also pursuing this technology for very rapid detection of acute rejection of the transplanted heart.
Another cardiac investigation, is determining the effects of down-regulation of b-receptors in heart failure and their influence on clinical management.
The nervous system is also an area of investigation. One study involves brain activation caused by pain and the signal attenuation over time within activated areas of the brain. The amount and duration of pain signal attenuation over time was examined. We found significant differences between pain and tingling in the ipsilateral cerebellum, contralateral thalamus, secondary somatosensory cortex, primary somatosensory cortex, and anterior cingulate cortex. Highly significant signal decay was found to exist across each single pain task, but the signal was found to be restored after a 4-minute rest period. This work shows that serial pain tasks can be used for functional magnetic resonance imaging studies using electrical nerve stimulation as a stimulus, as long as sufficient time is allowed between the two tasks. This research was published in the journal Anesthesiology in October of 2004.
Another line of investigation involves the gastrointestinal nervous system (the human enteric nervous system). In this research we are determining the effects of histamine on gastric mobility and complications in bowl disease by establishing the mechanisms by which histamine alters nerve function. We are establishing the localization of specific histaminergic receptor subtypes to functionally identified neurons in the human enteric nervous system.

Research Accomplishments of 2004

Monitoring Human Cardiac Allograft Rejection via Myocardial Electrical Impedance, Michael Howie, MD, PI - Researchers invented a myocardial electrical impedance monitor allowing them to assess an area of ischemia before and immediately after revascularization surgery. It also enables them to assess myocardial precondition in humans and acute rejection episodes in heart transplant patients.