Grady Brings REBOA to Georgia

The first in Georgia to perform the procedure, Grady Memorial Hospital will soon offer trauma specialists around the state and the country the opportunity to learn how to perform Resuscitative Endovascular Balloon Occlusion of the Aorta (REBOA).

“REBOA is a minimally invasive technique that uses a catheter to insert a balloon into the aorta, which temporizes a severely hemorrhaging wound when inflated, and buys time for a patient to get to the operating room or interventional radiology. Time is key, and this is another tool in the arsenal to do the best we can for our patients,” said Dr. Keren Aviva Bashan-Gilzenrat, assistant professor of surgery, trauma/critical care, Morehouse School of Medicine.

The endovascular surgical skills course called Grady Rescue and Endovascular Approaches to Trauma (GREAT) was developed by Drs. Bryan Morse, assistant professor of surgery, trauma/critical care, Emory University School of Medicine, Jonathan Nguyen, assistant professor of surgery, trauma/critical care, Morehouse School of Medicine, and Bashan-Gilzenrat – the team that performed the state’s first REBOA in November 2016.

“As the only nationally verified Level 1 trauma center in Metro Atlanta, Grady must lead in research and continually pursue innovative ways to treat our patients,” said Morse, who is also the trauma research director at Grady.

“We conducted the first GREAT course in December last year with eight Emory and Morehouse surgeons, who are now trained to perform the procedure at Grady,” Morse said. “We built this course from the ground up, and as a teaching hospital, it’s exciting to see how far it will go.”

The course comprises classroom and simulation training using the latest catheter technology to demonstrate technical aspects of the procedure on mannequins and cadavers. The next session is planned for May 2018.