Publications by authors named "Christopher S Thomas"

Objective: A paucity of formal leadership training programs exists for residents, and outcomes of those are limited in reporting. Based on a robust needs assessment, our program created a longitudinal cohort curriculum, Future Surgical Leaders, for residents and fellows of all levels to provide training in nontechnical skills. Our objective was to evaluate surgical resident short-term outcomes and satisfaction with the Future Surgical Leaders (FSL) curriculum.

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Seat belt syndrome (SBS) represents all injury profiles associated with seat belt injuries and motor vehicle crashes (MVCs). Seat belt syndrome classically presents with a superficial seat belt sign that may signify deeper intra-abdominal and/or spinal involvement. The amount of force transmitted from the restraint to the passenger ultimately dictates the amount and severity of the injury.

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Introduction: Lymphocele is a relatively common complication following lymphadenectomy of the inguinal lymph nodes; however, it is less common after open inguinal hernia repair. Postoperative lymphocele is usually caused by unrecognized injury to lymphatic vessels during surgical dissection and commonly requires reoperation to ligate the leaking lymphatics. Angiomyomatous hamaromas are rare lymphatic formations of unknown cause that can be treated with aspiration, sclerotherapy, and drain placement, but surgical intervention is often required.

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Flail chest occurs when three or more ribs have concurrent fractures in two or more places. Flail chest is a marker of injury severity and is associated with increased morbidity and mortality. The management of flail chest includes multiple nonoperative components in addition to surgical stabilization, which has been shown to lower mortality rates to those of multiple rib fractures with a stable chest wall (i.

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Background: The coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic restricted movement of individuals and altered provision of health care, abruptly transforming health care-use behaviors. It serves as a natural experiment to explore changes in presentations for surgical diseases including acute appendicitis. The objective was to determine if the pandemic was associated with changes in incidence of acute appendicitis compared to a historical control and to determine if there were associated changes in disease severity.

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The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has become an increasingly challenging problem throughout the world. Because of the numerous potential modes of transmission, surgeons and all procedural staff represent a unique population that requires standardized procedures to protect themselves and their patients. Although several protocols have been implemented during other infectious disease outbreaks, such as Ebola virus, no standardized protocol has been published in regard to the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Background: Heart failure is an inflammatory disease. Patients with acute decompensated heart failure (ADHF) exhibit significant inflammatory activity on admission. We hypothesized that Interleukin-1 blockade, with anakinra (Kineret, Swedish Orphan Biovitrum), would quench the acute inflammatory response in patients with ADHF.

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Patients with heart failure (HF) have evidence of chronic systemic inflammation. Whether inflammation contributes to the exercise intolerance in patients with HF is, however, not well established. We hypothesized that the levels of C-reactive protein (CRP), an established inflammatory biomarker, predict impaired cardiopulmonary exercise performance, in patients with chronic systolic HF.

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Sarcoidosis is an idiopathic systemic granulomatous disease recognized by clinical and radiographic findings, which ultimately require histopathologic confirmation of noncaseating granulomas for a definitive diagnosis. Psychiatric manifestations occur in 20% of patient with neurosarcoidosis [http://dynaweb.ebscohost.

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Pulmonary embolism is the third most common cardiovascular disease. For prevention of pulmonary embolism, vena caval filters are extensively used in the United States. Of the reported complications of vena caval filters, strut fracture of the filter is the least common.

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Sildenafil induces powerful cardioprotection against ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) injury. Since adenosine is known to be a major trigger of ischemic preconditioning, we hypothesized that A(1) adenosine receptor (A(1)AR) activation plays a role in sildenafil-induced cardioprotective signaling. Adult male C57BL wild-type (WT) mice or their corresponding A(1)AR knockout (A(1)AR-KO) mice were treated intraperitoneally (i.

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