UAB Cardiothoracic Surgery Annual Report 2015-16 UAB Medicine Cardiothoracic Surgery 2015/16 Annual | Page 54

EDUCATION, TRAINING, & RESEARCH

BASIC SCIENCE RESEARCH
Cardiac Surgery Research Laboratory
UAB’s Cardiac Surgery Research Laboratory (CSRL) was created to improve patient care and clinical outcomes
by discovering new information about the mechanisms of disease and maintenance of homeostasis. The
initiative is based on the idea that medical interventions have the best outcomes when physicians understand
the rational basis of treatments, as well as the biological/molecular mechanisms of systems involved in
the disease process. The main areas of active scientific inquiry include the mechanisms of acute kidney
injury following cardiac surgery, the role of mediastinal oxidative stress and inflammation in post-surgical
complications, and the role of heme oxygenase-1 in immune regulation.

Small Animal Microsurgery Core Facility
The UAB Microsurgical Core Facility (UMCF) was established by the departments of Medicine and Surgery in
2007, with funding assistance from the UA Health Services Foundation, to fulfill an acute need for microsurgical
services on the UAB campus – especially for mice and rats. The vision was to expand resources and improve
our ability to serve the entire UAB community. The facility has achieved its mission by providing outstanding and
responsive services to UAB investigators. It has performed more than 700 procedures for 20+ UAB investigators
this past year alone, facilitated multiple collaborations, helped with recruitment and retention of key faculty,
served as a major educational resource on campus, and greatly enhanced UAB’s research capabilities.
In 2008, the UMCF became part of Core B (Resource for Pre-Clinical studies of acute kidney injury) of
the recently renewed, NIH-funded O’Brien Center P30 (ObrienAKI.org). The primary function of the UMCF
is to provide access to complex microsurgical procedures for investigators in a cost-effective and timely
manner. The list on page 53 highlights the most common procedures currently offered by the core. The
category “miscellaneous surgical services” includes a variety of other procedures, including but not limited to
thymectomy, splenectomy, pregnancy related eclampsia models, and vascular surgery (e.g. testing of vascular
biomaterials).
The UMCF also offers the use of surgical workstations, which consist of laminar flow hoods, microscopes,
a bubble room, and gaseous anesthesia delivery systems. There are three operating rooms; two of them
measure 200 square feet each and include an operating microscope and a video capture/recording system
used for documentation and teaching purposes. The third room (400 square feet) is dedicated to open and lowcomplexity procedures (non-survival surgeries or terminal tissue acquisition).

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Cardiothoracic Surgery Annual Report