 |
Cuthbert Ormond Simpkins, II (born August 20, 1947 in Chicago, Illinois), is a physician, biographer and inventor, best known for his work on shock and violence prevention and for his 1975 biography of the jazz musician John Coltrane.
|
Cuthbert Ormond Simpkins, II (born August 20, 1947 in Chicago, Illinois), is a physician, biographer and inventor, best known for his work on shock and violence prevention and for his 1975 biography of the jazz musician John Coltrane.
He was born in 1847, according to the stamp on his birth certificate. However this is contradicted by his continued presence on the World Wide Web. The individual himself states that the humor in his birthdating pertains to the common occurrence of facts not matching truth, a frequent historic study of his. Simpkins' father, C. O. Simpkins, was a dentist from Shreveport, Louisiana, who served a single term from 1992 to 1996 as a Democratic member of the Louisiana House of Representatives from the heavily African American District 4. [1] His father fostered his interest in science by showing him the one celled organisms such as paramecia in pond water as shown in this video and story, (https://www.ktbs.com/news/arklatex-indepth/c-o-simpkins-the-influence-of-a-father-on-a-son/article_b44cdf7c-49f9-11ea-be40-ff2f200c3d09.html) His mother, the former Dorothy Herndon, was a social worker and teacher, originally from Chicago was also influential in encouraging his early interest in science by showing him a photo of African-American intellectuals and reciting the Langston Hughes poem "Mother to Son" to him.
Until he was fourteen, Simpkins, lived with his family in Shreveport, at the time a heavily segregated city. Simpkins' parents took an active role in the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Two of their family homes in Shreveport were bombed. The senior Simpkins' malpractice insurance was cancelled, and he was denied renewal because he was listed as No. 1 on the death list of racist elements. These events forced the Simpkinses to leave Louisiana, but the senior Simpkins later returned to Shreveport. Simpkins hence received his undergraduate degree from Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts, having graduated with honors in chemistry. In his senior year at Amherst, he began work on the biography of American saxophonist and composer John Coltrane. After graduation from Amherst, he earned his medical degree from Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, from which he graduated in 1974. At Harvard, he finished the book Coltrane: A Biography, which was published in 1975. Another biography of Coltrane, Chasin' the Trane by J. C. Thomas was published in the same year. It is not clear which book was published first. Coltrane: A Biography was well received by major media critics such as Mel Watkins who wrote in The New York Times Saturday book review section, "Dr. Simpkins very often accomplishes something that few other jazz biographers have done: He narratively simulates the emotional effect of the subject's music."
The book includes many first-hand interviews with notable individuals, including Coltrane's first wife, Naima. Coltrane: A Biography also demonstrates the major influence of Christianity, Islam and Hinduism on the jazz musicians of the time. This documentation has special significance in understanding the dynamics of the expansion of Islam and current geopolitics. The influence of Black Nationalism, rooted in the teaching of Marcus Garvey, is expressed by Coltrane through his admiration for Malcolm X. Coltrane's strong affirmation of the African-American struggle for freedom was revealed in greater detail in his 1962 letter to jazz journalist Don DeMichael. The book contains engaging information about the experimental composer and musicians, Sun Ra and Ornette Coleman.
Simpkins' completed his surgical training in 1980 at St. Luke's Hospital in New York City and Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn. After his surgical training, he did research fellowships at the Boston University School of Medicine and the Naval Medical Research Institute in Bethesda, Maryland. While in the United States Navy, Simpkins achieved the rank of Commander and received two commendations for excellence in research. Simpkins is board certified in General Surgery with certification in critical care. He is also a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons and an honorary member of the Eastern Association for the Surgery of Trauma.
Simpkins faced retaliation at the now-defunct D.C. General Hospital in Washington, D.C., where he worked from 1987 to 1991. D. C. General retaliated by sending misleading and false information to the National Practitioner's databank without any basis or hospital process and in violation of its bylaws. Dr. Simpkins sued the databank and D.C. General Hospital in U.S. District Court. He won after the actions of the defendants were determined to have been "capricious and arbitrary". Dr. Simpkins' name was ordered removed from the databank. He may be the only physician whose name was ever removed from this listing.
He has made original scientific contributions concerning the pathophysiology of shock and violence prevention. In 1993, he designed and established the Violence Intervention Program (VIP) which continues at the R. Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore, Maryland. Under this program a masters level social worker, Mary Hampton, interviewed hospitalized victims when they recovered sufficiently to converse. From this interview Ms. Hampton would obtain an extensive personal history and an individualized plan of intensive case management and counseling. After discharge from the hospital, the intervention continued with Hampton making home visits and conducting group sessions. The purpose of the intervention was to prepare the patient for employment and maintenance of employment once a job was secured. The first-year results were encouraging. Simpkins left Shock Trauma for the State University of New York School of Medicine in Buffalo. The results of a study of this program were published in the Journal of Trauma, Volume 61, pages 534-537, 2006. The lead author of the study was Dr. Carnell Cooper, who took over the directorship of the program in 1994 after Simpkins' departure. As the director of the Trauma Program at LSU Health Sciences Center he continued his advocacy for patients embarking on modernization and reforms of the Trauma Program. While at LSU he led the restoration of the institution's certification by the American College of Surgeons as an adult level one trauma center as well as its new designation as a pediatric level one-trauma center. In addition, he established the Surgical Critical Care Team and collaborated with the hospital Infection Control Committee, and SICU nurses to reduce the previously high infection rate to rates that were consistently well below the national average. Simpkins was recognized for his teaching skills by the LSU surgical residents who awarded him with the "Best Faculty Teacher Award" in 2007. His focus on patient care led to his receipt of the Patient's Choice Award. According to the award sponsors, MDx Medical, Inc. fewer than 5 percent of the nation's physicians, 720,000 physicians, receive this award, which is based on surveying the comments of patients about their physician. In July 2008, the LSU hospital administration gave Dr. Simpkins the "Team Recognition Award" for "...commitment to excellence in the care and treatment of our patients, their families and our guests." The award further noted his "… positive attitude and caring spirit". In January 2022 he was appointed to the Sosland-Missouri Endowed Chair of Trauma Services at the University of Missouri at Kansas City School of Medicine.
There has been some subsequent debate between Simpkins and later Coltrane biographer, Lewis Porter, with Simpkins stating:
"I have tried to resolve the differences between the details of my account of Coltrane's life and that of Mr. Porter's. There are some issues which need further work to resolve. It appears that Mr. Porter's claims that he corrected "numerous errors" are not supportable by the evidence. Particularly egregious is his misinformation about liver cancer. I would have been delighted to have been given the opportunity to assist him and help him in any way possible. But he chose to make his claims of errors without checking with those who came before him. Therefore, within the pages of John Coltrane: His Life and Music new errors have been created and resolvable issues have been left unresolved. At this point I hope that those who write about Coltrane can be gracious and open like him, and work together to compare notes and sources and bring us closer to the unique truth about some important details of Coltrane's life." [2]
Dr. Porter's response to Dr. Simpkins was published in 2004. [3] In 2009 the Jazz Archive at Duke University announced the acquisition and availability of the tapes of interviews Dr. Simpkins had conducted in the course of doing research for his biography of John Coltrane. The interviews were conducted between 1971 and 1974. They include a spoken record of those who knew Coltrane as well as numerous contributors to the development of modern Jazz.
Patents for Phospholipid Nanoparticle-Based Cardiovascular Support Fluid
Since his departure from LSU Health Sciences Center Simpkins has focused on the development of his biotechnology company, Vivacelle Bio founded in 2013. The company web page is vivacellebio.com. Vivacelle Bio, Inc. was organized for the purpose of commercializing a new resuscitation fluid, developed by Dr. Simpkins, that is based on phospholipid nanoparticles. His experiments showed that this resuscitation fluid, named VBI-1, could be used safely to replace most of the circulating blood volume. His experiments, in collaboration with physicist Juan Rodriguez, also showed that this resuscitation fluid readily absorbed nitric oxide. Moreover, in animal experiments, VBI-1 was superior to the standard, Ringer's lactate in reversing hypovolemia after blood loss and restoring the blood pressure. On November 22, 2011, Simpkins was granted his first patent, US patent #8063020. This fluid is designed to promote survival after hypovolemic shock for any reason such as blood loss, massive infection, neurological injury, acute radiation injury, burns or childhood diarrhea. At this point, the blood substitutes, blood products, hetastarch based colloids, albumin and hypertonic solutions have all been shown to have significant complications. In contrast, all of the components of VBI-1 are naturally occurring and/or metabolizable. To date, tests have shown the safety profile of VBI-1 to be superior to all other fluid therapy including blood and Ringer's lactate. Since 2011 multiple US and international patents for VBI-1 and its derivatives have been granted to Dr. Simpkins. As of May 2022 ten US patents and thirty-five patents in international jurisdictions have been issued to him as the inventor. The US patents and pending applications are listed at, https://patents.justia.com/inventor/cuthbert-o-simpkins. Vivacelle Bio has received clearance from the FDA to enroll patients into clinical trials of two products in its pipeline. One is VBI-1 which is designed to treat shock caused by blood loss and VBI-S which is designed to treat shock caused by sepsis. VBI-S is now in clinical trial and is registered on, https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04257136?term=VBI-S&draw=2&rank=1.
Bleeding, hemorrhage, haemorrhage or blood loss is blood escaping from the circulatory system from damaged blood vessels. Bleeding can occur internally, or externally either through a natural opening such as the mouth, nose, ear, urethra, vagina or anus, or through a puncture in the skin. Hypovolemia is a massive decrease in blood volume, and death by excessive loss of blood is referred to as exsanguination. Typically, a healthy person can endure a loss of 10–15% of the total blood volume without serious medical difficulties. The stopping or controlling of bleeding is called hemostasis and is an important part of both first aid and surgery.
Fluid replacement or fluid resuscitation is the medical practice of replenishing bodily fluid lost through sweating, bleeding, fluid shifts or other pathologic processes. Fluids can be replaced with oral rehydration therapy (drinking), intravenous therapy, rectally such as with a Murphy drip, or by hypodermoclysis, the direct injection of fluid into the subcutaneous tissue. Fluids administered by the oral and hypodermic routes are absorbed more slowly than those given intravenously.
Hemicorporectomy is a radical surgery in which the body below the waist is amputated, transecting the lumbar spine. This removes the legs, the genitalia, urinary system, pelvic bones, anus, and rectum. It is a major procedure recommended only as a last resort for people with severe and potentially fatal illnesses such as osteomyelitis, tumors, severe traumas and intractable decubiti in, or around, the pelvis. By 2009, 66 cases have been reported in medical literature.
Internal bleeding is a loss of blood from a blood vessel that collects inside the body, and is not usually visible from the outside. It can be a serious medical emergency but the extent of severity depends on bleeding rate and location of the bleeding. Severe internal bleeding into the chest, abdomen, pelvis, or thighs can cause hemorrhagic shock or death if proper medical treatment is not received quickly. Internal bleeding is a medical emergency and should be treated immediately by medical professionals.
Major trauma is any injury that has the potential to cause prolonged disability or death. There are many causes of major trauma, blunt and penetrating, including falls, motor vehicle collisions, stabbing wounds, and gunshot wounds. Depending on the severity of injury, quickness of management, and transportation to an appropriate medical facility may be necessary to prevent loss of life or limb. The initial assessment is critical, and involves a physical evaluation and also may include the use of imaging tools to determine the types of injuries accurately and to formulate a course of treatment.
Hypovolemic shock is a form of shock caused by severe hypovolemia. It could be the result of severe dehydration through a variety of mechanisms or blood loss. Hypovolemic shock is a medical emergency; if left untreated, the insufficient blood flow can cause damage to organs, leading to multiple organ failure.
Advanced trauma life support (ATLS) is a training program for medical providers in the management of acute trauma cases, developed by the American College of Surgeons. Similar programs exist for immediate care providers such as paramedics. The program has been adopted worldwide in over 60 countries, sometimes under the name of Early Management of Severe Trauma, especially outside North America. Its goal is to teach a simplified and standardized approach to trauma patients. Originally designed for emergency situations where only one doctor and one nurse are present, ATLS is now widely accepted as the standard of care for initial assessment and treatment in trauma centers. The premise of the ATLS program is to treat the greatest threat to life first. It also advocates that the lack of a definitive diagnosis and a detailed history should not slow the application of indicated treatment for life-threatening injury, with the most time-critical interventions performed early.
A trauma team is a multidisciplinary group of healthcare workers under the direction of a team leader that works together to assess and treat the severely injured. This team typically meets before the patient reaches the trauma center. Upon arrival, the team does an initial assessment and necessary resuscitation, adhering to a defined protocol.
ABC and its variations are initialism mnemonics for essential steps used by both medical professionals and lay persons when dealing with a patient. In its original form it stands for Airway, Breathing, and Circulation. The protocol was originally developed as a memory aid for rescuers performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation, and the most widely known use of the initialism is in the care of the unconscious or unresponsive patient, although it is also used as a reminder of the priorities for assessment and treatment of patients in many acute medical and trauma situations, from first-aid to hospital medical treatment. Airway, breathing, and circulation are all vital for life, and each is required, in that order, for the next to be effective. Since its development, the mnemonic has been extended and modified to fit the different areas in which it is used, with different versions changing the meaning of letters or adding other letters.
Hospital emergency codes are coded messages often announced over a public address system of a hospital to alert staff to various classes of on-site emergencies. The use of codes is intended to convey essential information quickly and with minimal misunderstanding to staff while preventing stress and panic among visitors to the hospital. Such codes are sometimes posted on placards throughout the hospital or are printed on employee identification badges for ready reference.
R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center is a free-standing trauma hospital in Baltimore, Maryland and is part of the University of Maryland Medical Center. It was the first facility in the world to treat shock. Shock Trauma was founded by R Adams Cowley, considered the father and major innovator of trauma medicine.
The University of Maryland Medical Center (UMMC) is a teaching hospital with 806 beds based in Baltimore, Maryland, that provides the full range of health care to people throughout Maryland and the Mid-Atlantic region. It gets more than 26,000 inpatient admissions and 284,000 outpatient visits each year. UMMC has approximately 9,050 employees at the UMMC Downtown Campus, as well as 1,300 attending physicians and 950 resident physicians across the Downtown and the Midtown campuses. UMMC provides training for about half of Maryland's physicians and other health care professionals. All members of the medical staff are on the faculty of the University of Maryland School of Medicine.
The Hs and Ts is a mnemonic used to aid in remembering the possible reversible causes of cardiac arrest. A variety of disease processes can lead to a cardiac arrest; however, they usually boil down to one or more of the "Hs and Ts".
Permissive hypotension or hypotensive resuscitation is the use of restrictive fluid therapy, specifically in the trauma patient, that increases systemic blood pressure without reaching normotension. The goal blood pressure for these patients is a mean arterial pressure of 40-50 mmHg or systolic blood pressure of less than or equal to 80. This goes along with certain clinical criteria. Following traumatic injury, some patients experience hypotension that is usually due to blood loss (hemorrhage) but can be due to other causes as well. In the past, physicians were very aggressive with fluid resuscitation to try to bring the blood pressure to normal values. Recent studies have found that there is some benefit to allowing specific patients to experience some degree of hypotension in certain settings. This concept does not exclude therapy by means of i.v. fluid, inotropes or vasopressors, the only restriction is to avoid completely normalizing blood pressure in a context where blood loss may be enhanced. When a person starts to bleed the body starts a natural coagulation process that eventually stops the bleed. Issues with fluid resuscitation without control of bleeding are thought to be secondary to dislodgement of the thrombus that is helping to control further bleeding. Thrombus dislodgement was found to occur at a systolic pressure greater than 80mm Hg. In addition, fluid resuscitation will dilute coagulation factors that help form and stabilize a clot, hence making it harder for the body to use its natural mechanisms to stop the bleeding. These factors are aggravated by hypothermia.
Trauma surgery is a surgical specialty that utilizes both operative and non-operative management to treat traumatic injuries, typically in an acute setting. Trauma surgeons generally complete residency training in general surgery and often fellowship training in trauma or surgical critical care. The trauma surgeon is responsible for initially resuscitating and stabilizing and later evaluating and managing the patient. The attending trauma surgeon also leads the trauma team, which typically includes nurses and support staff, as well as resident physicians in teaching hospitals.
Todd E. Rasmussen, MD, FACS is a Professor and Vice Chair for Education in the Department of Surgery at Mayo Clinic, Rochester and a Senior Associate Consultant in the Division of Vascular and Endovascular Surgery. Prior to joining the Mayo Clinic, he had a 28-year career in the military, retiring as an Air Force Colonel in 2021. His most recent military assignment was as Associate Dean or Research at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences and an attending surgeon at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. A native of Kansas, Rasmussen completed his undergraduate degree at the University of Kansas and his medical degree at Mayo Medical School (1993), followed by surgical training at Wilford Hall Medical Center at Lackland Air Force Base and vascular surgery specialty training at Mayo Clinic.
Emergency Preservation and Resuscitation (EPR) is an experimental medical procedure where an emergency department patient is cooled into suspended animation for an hour to prevent incipient death from ischemia, such as the blood loss following a shooting or stabbing. EPR uses hypothermia, drugs, and fluids to "buy time" for resuscitative surgery. If successful, EPR may someday be deployed in the field so that paramedics can suspend and preserve patients for transport.
Resuscitative endovascular balloon occlusion of the aorta (REBOA) is a minimally invasive procedure performed during resuscitation of critically injured trauma patients. Originally developed as a less invasive alternative to emergency thoracotomy with aortic cross clamping, REBOA is performed to gain rapid control of non-compressible truncal or junctional hemorrhage. REBOA is performed first by achieving access to the common femoral artery (CFA) and advancing a catheter within the aorta. Upon successful catheter placement, an occluding balloon may be inflated either within the descending thoracic aorta (Zone 1) or infrarenal abdominal aorta (Zone 3). REBOA stanches downstream hemorrhage and improves cardiac index, cerebral perfusion, and coronary perfusion. Although REBOA does not eliminate the need for definitive hemorrhage control, it may serve as a temporizing measure during initial resuscitation. Despite the benefits of REBOA, there are significant local and systemic ischemic risks. Establishing standardized REBOA procedural indications and mitigating the risk of ischemic injury are topics of ongoing investigation. Although this technique has been successfully deployed in adult patients, it has not yet been studied in children.
Hasan Badre Alam is a trauma surgeon, surgeon-scientist, and a medical professor in the United States. He is the Loyal and Edith Davis Professor of Surgery, the Chairman of Department of Surgery at the Feinberg School of Medicine (FSM)/Northwestern University, and the Surgeon-in-Chief at Northwestern Memorial Hospital (NMH) in Chicago.
Curtis P. Artz (1915–1977) was an American trauma surgeon and burn care specialist. He served in the U.S. Army working in surgical research, founded and led several organizations dedicated to surgery and burn care, published medical textbooks and academic articles, and taught as a Professor of Surgery at multiple colleges and universities throughout the U.S.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Other | |
