Glaring omission

I wish to congratulate you on a very nice article ("Saving Brain," Emory Medicine, spring 2001). Stroke gets far too little press, and every bit of exposure and education helps.

I would like to point out some significant omissions, however. The Emory interventional neuroradiology team, who perform all the minimally invasive procedures mentioned in the article (mechanical and chemical thrombolysis, aneurysm treatment, angioplasty, and stenting of the neck and cerebral vessels, to name a few) have names and are not mere technicians. There are two of us (Dr. Frank Tong and me) who each have trained seven years to qualify to do these procedures and who cumulate 28 years of experience.

Without interventional neuroradiology and the cutting-edge procedures it performs, a good portion of your article could not have been written, and Emory could not call itself a leader in stroke therapy. Like other members of the stroke team, we are involved in research protocols on mechanical clot removal for stroke, stenting of cervical carotid and inteventional vessels for stroke, stenting and coiling for cerebral aneurysms, and evaluation of a novel embolic material in preoperative embolization of brain arteriovenous malformations.

Finally, no mention is made of Dr. Owen Samuels, a stroke neurologist and Emory's [and Georgia's] only neurointesivist, whose services are crucial to the care and survival of stroke and neurovascular patients.

JACQUES DION, MD
Professor of Radiology and Neurosurgery
Head, Interventional Neuroradiology

Editor's note: Everyone at Emory is proud of Emory's stroke team. The realities of publication, primarily space constraints, mean that articles often can't focus on everyone who helps make a program like stroke so successful and interesting in the first place. Our goal isn't to be comprehensive because we can't be. But Dr. Dion's letter gives us the chance to acknowledge and appreciate the crucial role of interventional neuroradiology in the stroke team's stature and ability to help patients, both now and the future.

Chair Confusion

Many thanks for including the nice note about my sketches of patients in Emory Medicine (spring 2001, page 37). I would appreciate your clarifying that I am currently professor and Gerald Leon Wallace Chair in Family Medicine as well as director of the University of Alabama Center for the Study of Tobacco and Society but am not the chair of the department of family medicine. That means I don't have any of the administrative responsibilities or headaches that actual chair, Dr. William Owings, has. I think it would be both respectful and accurate to set the record straight.

ALAN BLUM, 75M
Professor and Wallace Chair in Family Medicine
University of Alabama, Birmingham


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