Math alumnus Jack Cuzick (PhD, '74), a pioneer in cancer prevention screening, isn't only person in CGU's math community taking math training out into the medical field.
Professor Marina Chugunova, who serves as the director of the Institute of Mathematical Sciences, is now collaborating with an important project associated with a life-saving type of pediatric surgery.
More than 40 years ago, the \”Fontan procedure\” was initially explained a French doctor as a surgical intervention to help infants who, as a result of birth defect, are born with only just one functional ventricle of the heart.
The Fontan procedure compensates for the lack of another ventricle chamber by diverting venous blood to the pulmonary arteries, and that helps the individual to recover and develop normally.
But a significant problem-and the reason behind Professor Chugunova's involvement in a new project-eventually develops as a result of the procedure.
The sole functioning ventricle must do twice the expected work, which results in these patients later experiencing heart failure in the third decade of their lives and requiring heart transplantation when the issue is detected in time. Too often, though, that detection happens past too far.
In collaboration using the Division of Vascular Surgery at Toronto General Hospital, Professor Chugunova and her colleagues at the University of Toronto and the Ukraine Academy of Science are modeling blood pressure level distribution following the surgical procedure. Their efforts will give you doctors with data on blood pressure that will help them detect the onset of heart failure prior to life-saving intervention.
Chugunova's involvement in this project came via her attendance of a math modeling workshop a year ago during which the Toronto doctors presented their problem to workshop attendees.
\”In the long term, doctors realize that the Fontan procedure leads to heart failure,\” explained Chugunova. \”But by modeling blood pressure distribution, we will produce data that may help anticipate these failures in the early stages. We are giving doctors information, and we are giving these patients something even more important: hope.\”
TRUMP’S PICK: The White House has announced President Trump's intention to appoint math alumnus Tomas J. Philipson to the Council of monetary Advisers, which was established some 70 years back to provide the united states president with key advice for economic policy.
Philipson, who supports the Daniel Levin Chair in Public Policy at the University of Chicago, holds a doctorate in mathematics in the University of Pennsylvania and received his master's in mathematics at CGU in 1986.
Philipson also serves as director of the Health Economics Program of the Becker Friedman Institute.
