Brian D’Cruz

Political hotspot trauma doc
Summer 2017

D’Cruz at the the Donka Ebola treatment center in Conakry, Guinea, in January 2015.

 

Wounded men, women, and children arrived by the truckload at the makeshift emergency bay of the chicken farm-turned-hospital. Brian D’Cruz and a dozen other Doctors Without Borders health care workers—all of whom volunteered to work in northern Syria—rushed to their aid. Scores of civilians had been targets of bombings that day in the lush, mountainous region near the Turkish border. D’Cruz remembers that three people died. Had the hospital not been there, he says, there would have been at least 20 more. “That was my best day in Syria.”

When Doctors Without Borders (aka Médecins Sans Frontières, or MSF) first approached D’Cruz (MD ’04, Res ’07) about a project in Syria, he said no. Although he had been a part of prior missions in Chad, the Republic of the Congo, and the Central African Republic, he was especially worried about security in the Middle East.

After a few months, he had a change of heart. “Essentially, the more I read about it, the more I was seeing that people there just had no access to care,” recalls D’Cruz. “I’m an ER doctor, I work in a trauma center, I’m capable of doing that kind of work, and there’s a desperate need for people who are able to do it.” So, in August 2013, D’Cruz flew to Syria’s Idlib province for a two-month assignment.

The hospital where he worked, which originally began in a cave, had moved to the converted chicken farm (an industrial building fortified with concrete) because its location was relatively safe and the structure was solid. Generators provided power. “At the time, we were the most advanced hospital in the area,” D’Cruz remembers.

There, MSF served as a lifeline for people to receive the quality of medical attention they once had. Prior to the bombings, medical care in Syria was sophisticated and readily available. “Patients would carry copies of their MRIs and CTs and all the information they had before the war,” D’Cruz says. “That’s the first place I’ve ever worked with MSF where the medical care had been that advanced and then had essentially been taken away.” Soon after D’Cruz finished his assignment, MSF was forced to close the hospital. It could no longer guarantee the safety of the staff.

D’Cruz speaks fondly of the Syrian people he met, their beautiful countryside, and their persistence in offering homemade meals as a gesture of appreciation. “They were just regular people like us. It was nice to see how different it wasn’t—even in the middle of a war.”

Since Syria, D’Cruz has participated in three other MSF projects—two in conflict-ridden African countries and one in Guinea serving as the supervising medical doctor for a 90-bed Ebola treatment center.

In between his trips overseas, he works as an attending physician in the emergency department at Inova Fairfax Hospital outside Washington, D.C. He says the hospital and his colleagues fully support his volunteer work. “They trade and cover shifts for me so I’m able to go. A lot of them have told me, ‘I’m not able to do what you’re doing, so I’ll make it possible for you to do it. I’ll work in your place so that you can go.’”

D’Cruz has always been drawn to providing medical care during a crisis—something he calls limited-resource disaster response. When he was a Pitt resident, he helped medical teams in New Orleans and Baton Rouge after Hurricane Katrina. In 2011, he went to Haiti after the earthquake. It was in Haiti, while working for another organization, where he first saw MSF in action and applied to be part of their volunteer team.

A labor of love for D’Cruz, providing trauma relief drives his practice forward. “That’s part of the reason why I went into medicine—to take care of lots of sick people who don’t have anywhere else to go. Even though it’s horrible that those things happen, it’s very satisfying to do the work as a doctor.”  


 

Robin West

Turning athletes right side up

By Sharon Tregaskis

Photo courtesy Redskins Broadcasting Network

West (right) says prevention is an athlete's best defense.

After more than a decade as an orthopaedic surgeon and sports doc, Robin West (Fel ’03) figured she had the hang of her work. Then a bicycle accident left the amateur triathlete with a concussion, multiple broken ribs, and a shattered shoulder.

“I have a totally newfound respect for the medical and psychological aspects of recovery,” says the 45-year-old, who underwent two shoulder repair operations and was sidelined from triathlete training, as well as her appointment as chair and medical director for Inova Sports Medicine in the Washington, D.C., suburbs. “It’s not just the pain of surgery, but your whole life is turned upside down. I understand how scary it is wanting to get back to where you were before,” adds West, who serves as head team physician for the Washington Redskins as well as lead team physician for the Washington Nationals.

While not all injuries can be avoided, West has made prevention a cornerstone of her practice. In 2015, she led an overhaul of the Nationals’ medical program, instituting data-based analytics to monitor the overall health of players and detect issues before they become full-blown injuries. She credits mentor Freddie Fu, chair of Pitt’s Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, with spurring her commitment to making herself available to patients. “Any time a Pitt athlete was injured, they were seen immediately,” says West, who worked with Fu as a fellow and garnered two Super Bowl rings during her decade as assistant team physician for the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Availability is challenging in the sprawling D.C. metropolitan area, says West, who earned licensure in D.C., Maryland, and Virginia so that she can treat players whether they’re at a training site, on the playing field, or in her office. At Inova, she’s hired athletic trainers, physical therapists, concussion experts, and a neuropsychologist, in addition to fellow surgeons and primary care docs. “We’re a one-stop shop for players and everyday athletes.”

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