Division Meeting | Nathan Brummel, MD, MSCI, “Integrating Geriatric Principles into Critical Care Medicine”

PRESENTATION: “Integrating Geriatric Principles into Critical Care Medicine: The Time is Now”

by Nathan E. Brummel

Instructor in Medicine, Allergy, Pulmonary, and Critical Care Medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center

Dr. Brummel is an aging-focused critical care clinical investigator. His NIH/NIA-funded research program seeks to understand frailty, disabilities, and impairments that accompany critical illness through the conduct of observational cohort studies, development of better tools to understand underlying mechanisms, and via the development of clinical prediction tools. He is the recipient of the Paul B. Beeson Emerging Leaders in Aging Research Career Development Award, the nation’s preeminent career award in aging research. He is the PI of over 300 patient observational trials to determine the association between physical activity during hospitalization for critical illness with later 3- and 12-month disability in activities of daily living, physical function, and cognitive function. His publications in journals such as the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, Intensive Care Medicine, and Critical Care Medicine are helping to close the significant gaps in the literature regarding pre-existing and newly-acquired vulnerability factors (e.g., frailty and its correlates) which are strong risk factors for disability in survivors of critical illness. He is the founder and co-chair of the American Thoracic Society Aging in Critical Care Interest Group, the largest aging-focused, collaborative, critical care group worldwide. He has given invited presentations across North America, Europe, South America, Asia, and Australia related to his work including on topics such as frailty, disability, delirium, physical and cognitive impairments, and on novel combined physical and cognitive rehabilitation strategies deployed both during and after critical illness.

As a fellow, Dr. Brummel was the PI of a randomized trial that established the feasibility of early cognitive and physical therapy for patients with critical illness. Previously, Dr. Brummel explored the clinical utility of eucapnic voluntary hyperventilation as a diagnostic test for exercise-induced bronchospasm at the Ohio State University Asthma Center with Drs. Jonathan Parsons and John Mastronarde.

Prior to medical school, Dr. Brummel studied under Dr. Thomas Pisarri at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska, where he researched the role of neurally-release nitric oxide in the regulation of airway smooth muscle contraction.