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2019 FAER Medical Student Anesthesia Research Fellows Henry Paiste and Ezoza Rajabaliev

"Headshots of fellows Henry Paiste and Ezoza Rajabaliev"

 

Our department was one of 40 sites nationwide selected to host 2019 Foundation for Anesthesia Education and Research (FAER) Medical Student Anesthesia Research Fellows (MSARF). FAER created the MSARF program to encourage talented medical students to consider careers in anesthesiology research and perioperative medicine. The summer fellowship provides medical students with an eight-week research experience within an academic anesthesiology department. During the fellowship, students participate in research, training, and clinical anesthesiology. In addition, they have the opportunity to present scientific work at the 2019 American Society of Anesthesiologists annual meeting. 

Henry Paiste, a Pittsburgh native, is currently a second-year medical student at the University of Alabama Birmingham (UAB). He graduated magna cum laude from UAB in 2018 and was a student-athlete on the men’s tennis team. He worked with Brian A. Williams, MD, MBA on his project, “Extended Perineural Analgesia after Hip and Knee Replacement when Buprenorphine-Clonidine-Dexamethasone (BCD) is added to Bupivacaine (BPV): Preliminary Report from a Prospective Clinical Trial.” This research focused on examining what effects the adjuvants buprenorphine, clonidine, and dexamethasone had when utilized with a regional anesthetic drug such as BPV. Their research found that when BCD is added to BPV, the length of a nerve block can be doubled (e.g., from 16 hours to 32 hours). 

Ezoza Rajabaliev is a current second-year medical student at the Campbell University School of Osteopathic Medicine in North Carolina. With her mentor Grace Lim, MD, MS, Ezoza is conducting a secondary analysis of a longitudinal observational trial to quantify the relationship between pain and depression throughout the pregnancy spectrum. Using the high-risk cohort from the LEAP trial (Relationship of Loss of Control Eating to Excessive Gestational Weight Gain), the investigators are: 1) characterizing the relationship between acute postpartum pain and depression detected by structured clinical interview for DSM diagnoses; and 2) examining the relative influence of acute pain compared to other factors known to influence risk for postpartum depression. Dr. Lim and Ezoza's work will provide more definitive evidence of the nature of the relationship between perinatal pain and depression than existing studies have been able to offer. During her time as a FAER scholar, Ezoza also had the opportunity to shadow a variety of anesthesiologists and was exposed to obstetric, general, orthopedic, and regional anesthesia and chronic pain medicine. Her well-rounded and positive experiences as a FAER scholar have solidified her career goal to become a physician-scientist in anesthesiology.