Patrick Alan Gorman, MD passed away this month at the age of 84. Pat (who spelled his middle

name properly) was on the faculty of the George Washington School of Medicine for 44 years

from 1964 until his retirement in 2008. He retired as Professor Emeritus. Pat is one of the last of a

breed of non-invasive cardiologists who advanced the field of electrocardiography and cardiac

rehabilitation.

Pat was born in Belfast, N. Ireland, and trained at Queens University in Belfast. He completed a

year of training at McGill in Montreal, and then in 1961 did a Fellowship in Cardiology/Medicine

at GW.

In 1967, Pat was involved with developing one of the first systems to digitize ECG’s in order to be

transmitted electronically rather than by slow mail. This breakthrough also resulted in the ability

to compare ECG’s among patients in cardiac clinical trials.

It was in the field of cardiac rehabilitation that Pat flourished. He was the Director of the Cardiac

Rehab Unit at GW from its inception in the 1960’s until it was closed in the early 2000’s. Every

Monday, Wednesday and Friday, Pat could be found down at the Smith Center leading a group of

post MI patients through an exercise program. Pat was one of the first advocates of post MI exer-

cise. A marked departure from the time recent past when Post MI patient were kept at bed rest for

4-6 weeks or until they developed a pulmonary embolism, whichever came first. Pat wanted them

up and moving, if nothing else to restore their confidence and to get back to a normal life.

Throughout much of the 70’s, NIH sponsored the National Exercise and Heart Disease Project

(NEHDP). This was a study of 651 males ages 30-64 all post MI within three years, randomized to

either an exercise group or control. The exercise group had 8 weeks of structured exercise fol-

lowed by 34 months of an individual exercise program. The control group received lectures on

diet. At the end of three years, the exercise group had a morality rate of 4.6% compared to 7.3% in

the control group as well as lower amount of recurrent MI’s. Because of the small sample size this

was not statistical significant but the trend was certainly in favor of a structured exercise program.

Probably the most important outcome was to make sure that future cardiac studies would not be

underpowered. However, to this day, there has not been another large randomized study looking at

the efficacy of cardiac rehabilitation.

He was the most laid-back person I think I ever knew, especially for a cardiologist. Pat also di-

rected the exercise lab at GW for over three decades and had contracts with the FBI, CIA, and

Department of Transportation to perform exercise tests on their employees. He also did exercise

tests at the local YMCA. Once he asked me to cover for him at the Y. This was a group of low

risk patients who were given the option to have an exercise test as a perk of membership. The only

patient I had the day I covered told me that he was doing the test to see how good a shape he was

in. He did not tell me he was having daily bouts of exercise induced chest pain. He arrested a few

minutes into exercise and here I was at the Y with nothing with which to treat him but Gatorade.

Fortunately he was revived when the paramedics arrived, and subsequently did well post bypass

surgery. I never covered, hell, I never went to the Y again.

Patients loved Dr. Gorman. He was quiet, caring and reassuring. I never saw Pat flustered or ex-

cited. Pat was a gentle soul who probably never made an enemy. He had a passion for golf which

he enjoyed until he became too sick to play. He was never a big personality but he was an honest

and decent man who helped thousands of patients and he will be missed.

December 2014 Volume 18, Issue 12

GW Medicine Notes

A Monthly Publication of the GW Department of Medicine

From the Chairman It is with distinct pleasure, I share with you

the great news I just received. The George

Washington University Hospital’s appli-

cation for membership with the United

Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) has

been approved. That, along with our

Certificate of Need (CON) to perform

Kidney and Pancreas Transplants,

makes it official. The GW Hospital Trans-

plant Program is ready to begin expanded

operations. This means we are able to

start listing patients on the national UNOS

transplant list and perform kidney trans-

plants.

It’s clear our community needs this ser-

vice. That’s just based on the large num-

ber of dialysis patients in the re-

gion. Nearly 2,000 individuals receive kid-

ney dialysis treatments in the District of

Columbia alone. Now, patients who need

a transplant have another option and we

expect to become the preferred option.

I’d like to especially congratulate the core

team of people who’ve labored for more

than a year to make this possible. Your

patience and persistence have paid off.

I’m sure it is just the first of many achieve-

ments we can expect from the entire

transplant team.

This is great news. It sets a tone for a fan-

tastic finish in 2014 and a bright New Year

ahead.

Alan G. Wasserman, M.D.

Message from Barry A.

Wolfman, GWUH CEO...

save the Date

Faculty/housestaff Holiday Party

Friday, December 12th, 2014

Westin georgetown

Washington DC Hotel

Department of Medicine December 2014 Grand Rounds

Medicine Team Contacts

Page 2 GW Medicine Notes

WHITE TEAM (202) 715-5669 YELLOW TEAM (202) 715-6041 GREEN TEAM (202) 715-6062 RED TEAM (202) 715-6039 BLUE TEAM (202) 715-6156 SILVER TEAM (202) 715-6040 PURPLE TEAM (202) 715-6042 GOLD TEAM (202) 715-6044

ADMITTING RESIDENT 741-0161 pager

Resident Lecture Series December 2014 Noon Conference Dec 1 Recruitment

Dec 2 Journal Club

Dec 3 GME Core Lecture

Dec 4 Medicine Grand Rounds

Dec 5 Recruitment

Dec 8 Recruitment

Dec 9 Clinicopathologic Conference-

Drs. Nishant Magar and Paul Blair

Dec 10 Recruitment

Dec 11 Medicine Grand Rounds Dec 12 Recruitment Dec 15 Recruitment

Dec 16 “Hepatorenal Syndrome”- Dr. Ashte Collins

Dec 17 Recruitment

Dec 18 Medicine Grand Rounds

Dec 19 Recruitment

Dec 22 Holiday Week– No Conference

Dec 23 Holiday Week– No Conference

Dec 24 Holiday Week– No Conference

Dec 25 Holiday Week– No Conference

Dec 26 Holiday Week– No Conference

Dec 29 Holiday Week– No Conference

Dec 30 Holiday Week– No Conference

Dec 31 Holiday Week– No Conference

Dec 4 “ Approaches to Outpatient Weight Management” Ginger Winston, MD

Associate Professor Division of General Internal Medicine Department of Medicine GW Medical Faculty Associates

Dec 11 “Pulmonary Hypertension” Gurusher Panjrath, MD Assistant Professor

Division of Cardiology Department of Medicine GW Medical Faculty Associates

Dec 18 “Mission Work” Khashayer Vaziri, MD Associate Professor of Surgery Department of Surgery

GW Medical Faculty Associates And

Paul Dangerfield, MD Assistant Professor of Anesthesiology Director, Acute and Chronic Pain Services GW Medical Faculty Associates

Dec 25 Cancelled for Winter Holiday

Cardiology Grand Rounds 5:00 PM, Ross Hall, Room # 104

Dec 3 Mortality & Morbidity Conference

Dec 10 American Heart Association Annual Sessions Dec 17 Jose Vargas, MD PhD Assistant Professor of Medicine Division of Cardiology Department of Medicine Georgetown University Hospital Epigenetic Primer for the Cardiologist Dec 24 No Conference– Winter Holiday Dec 31 No Conference– Winter Holiday

The George Washington University Medical Center (GWUMC) is accredited by

the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) to

sponsor continuing medical education for physicians. GWUMC designates this continuing medical education activity on an hour-for-hour basis in Category I of

the Physician’s Recognition Award of the American Medical Association.

(AMA).

GW Medicine Notes Page 3

Dr. Muralidharan Jagadeesan joins the Division of

Renal and Hypertension as the Medical Director of

the Nephrology Transplant Program at GWUH. Dr.

Jagadeesan comes to us at the Associate Professor

rank from Medical College of Georgia, Georgia

Health Sciences University, where he has been on fac-

ulty since 1997. He is also is the Director of the Renal

Transplant Fellowship.

Dr. Jagadeesan received his medical degree from

Madras Medical College Chennai in Madras, India.

He completed his Internal Medicine residency at

Woodhull Medical Center in Brooklyn, New York

and went on to do his Clinical Nephrology and

Nephrology Transplant fellowship training at the Uni-

versity of Toronto in Toronto, Canada. He is board

certified in Internal Medicine and Nephrology.

BEST HALLOWEEN COSTUME ON THE WARDS!!

Where’s Dr. Mehta?

Purple Team Photo

Please Join Us In Welcoming Our Newest

Addition to the Medicine Faculty

On October 30th, the Rodham Institute hosted its 2014 Summit to promote health equity. Attendees included leaders from local and national health advocacy organizations, as well as Hillary Ro-dham Clinton and Clinton Health Matters Initiative Chief Executive Officer Rain Henderson. The Institute, which is housed within the George Washington University (GW) School of Medicine and Health Sciences (SMHS) and supported by the GW Medical Faculty Associates, seeks to apply the transformative power of education to help future and current health care providers achieve health equity in Washington, D.C.

“Over the last year, the Rodham Institute has worked toward identifying sustainable solutions to promote health equity through education and training,” said Jehan ‘Gigi’ El-Bayoumi, M.D., found-ing director of the Rodham Institute and associate professor of medicine at SMHS. “Having an open dialogue and working with leaders of existing community programs and organizations, as encouraged in today’s Summit, is paramount to meeting our goals.”

At the Summit, the Rodham Institute awarded a $5,000 grant to Breathe DC, an organization dedicated to reducing asthma and lung disease in D.C., for their proposal to create a parent advoca-cy group to improve housing and health conditions for children and their families.

Poster presentations by the Institute’s community partners and

students involved in the Rodham Institute’s Health Education Leadership Programs, a comprehensive pipeline program designed to cultivate student interest in diverse health professions among underrepresented minority youth, were exhibited during the event. Discussions on health professions training, workforce de-velopment, and community collaboration were also an important part of the Summit.

“It’s an incredible honor to have this Institute named in memory of my mother,” said Clinton. “The mission of the Institute is so much in line with what we are doing at the Clinton Foundation and is also in line with my mother’s own upbringing and her con-cerns about caring for people who are left out and left behind.”

Founded in 2013, in honor of the late Dorothy Rodham, the Ro-

dham Institute’s focus is partnering with the D.C. community to

achieve health equity through the education and cultivation of the

next generation of community-oriented health care providers.

Through creating and supporting programs, such as a new health

equity elective at SMHS, the Rodham Institute is training future

and current health care providers how to use innovative strategies

to improve health care for all. In the years ahead, the Rodham

Institute hopes to establish practices that will serve as a bench-

mark for other medical and health sciences schools across the

country.

Rodham Institute: Summit 2014

The George Washington University Medical Faculty Associates

Department of Medicine, Suite 8-416

2150 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW

Washington, DC 20037

GW Medicine Notes Page 4

See you next month! The Editor

Congratulations… to Dr. Alan Greenberg for being awarded the Alvan R. Feinstein Memorial Award from the American College of Physicians. The award is given to an American physician who has made a major contribution to the science of patient care in activi-ties that Dr. Feinstein (internationally recognized as the father of clinical epidemiology) has broadly defined as clinical epidemiolo-gy or clinimetrics, involving the direct study of patients’ clinical conditions. Dr. Greenberg was nominated by Drs. Wasserman and Simon. Way to go! Congratulations… to Dr. Geraldine Schechter, Professor Emeri-tus, for being recognized with the 2014 Henry M. Stratton Medal for her seminal contributions in the areas of clinical hematology at the Annual American Society of Hematology meeting in early De-cember. Congratulations… to Dr. Jun Shoji, PGY 5, in the Division of Nephrology, for being accepted into UCSF’s Transplant Nephrolo-gy Fellowship. Great Job! Congratulations… on the recently published book titled, “Chronic Renal Disease” which was edited by Drs. Paul Kimmel and Mark Rosenberg. It is authored by renal faculty including Drs. Ashte Collins, Maria Wing, Scott Cohen, Samir Patel, Lakmir Chawla, Susie Lew, Manual Velasquez and Dominic Raj. Congratulations… to Dr. Adam Possner, DGIM, and his wife Mar-

ci Possner, on their newest addition to their family, Ezra Reuben

Possner, born on October 27th weighing 8 lbs.

Rheumatology Academic Conference Schedule December 2014

*Please note new conference locations: ACC Building 6B-411B (8:00 am - 9:00 am)

Questions? Call (202) 741-2488

Dec 4 Journal Club Dr. J. Miller Dec 4 Rheumatology Divisional Meeting 1:00 - 3:00 p.m., Ross Hall, Conference room 201 C Dec 11 Radiology Conference Dr. Kathleen Brindle, Associate Professor of Radiology Chief, Musculoskeletal Radiology NOTE LOCATION: GWU Hospital Radiology Conference Room Dec 11 Didactic Sessions 1:00 - 3:00p.m., Ross Hall, Conference room 201 C Dec 18 Intra-City Rheumatology Grand Rounds NOTE LOCATION: George Washington University NOTE TIME: 7:30 AM Dec 18 Cancelled: Didactic Sessions Dec 25 No Conference – Winter Holiday

Congratulations

Announcement It is with sadness that I write that Dr. Patrick Alan Gorman, former

Professor Emeritus of Cardiology, passed away on November 8th.