In for the long haul: sustaining and rebuilding educational operations after Hurricane Katrina.

In 2005, Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent levee breaks left 80% of New Orleans under water for weeks. Within 4 short weeks, the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center at New Orleans had relocated its campus temporarily to Baton Rouge and resumed operations. Many lessons were learned in the first year of recovery and disseminated to the field regarding emergency and disaster preparedness and response. As we approach the second anniversary of the nation's most devastating natural disaster, we reflect on the long haul of rebuilding and offer new insights and lessons for sustaining operations and enhancing long-term rebuilding efforts.

Survival and recovery: maintaining the educational mission of the Louisiana state university school of medicine in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina.

Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and the coastlines of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama on August 29, 2005. The flooding in New Orleans left hundreds of thousands of people homeless and threatened to close businesses and institutions, including Louisiana State University (LSU) School of Medicine and its two principle training sites in New Orleans, Charity Hospital and University Hospital. In the weeks immediately after the storm, LSU School of Medicine resumed undergraduate and graduate medical education in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and elsewhere. The authors discuss the specific challenges they faced in relocating administrative operations, maintaining the mission of medical education, and dealing with the displacement of faculty, staff, residents, students, and patients, and the processes used to overcome these challenges. They focus on the school's educational missions, but challenges faced by the offices of student affairs, faculty affairs, and admissions are also discussed. LSU School of Medicine's experience provides lessons about organizational preparedness for a mass disaster that may be of interest to other medical schools.

Vascular alterations in response to air desiccation injury in the carotid artery of the C3H/HeJ mouse.

The purpose of this study was to develop a model of vascular injury in 8-week-old C3H/HeJ mice (weight, 25 to 30 g) by using air desiccation. The carotid arteries were excised 1 to 8 weeks postinjury and evaluated by Verhoeff's stain and immunocytochemistry. In the first group of mice studied (n = 107), neointimal formation occurred and peaked at Day 14. In addition, medial cell division (measured by bromodeoxyuridine labeling) peaked at Day 3, whereas intimal cell proliferation increased gradually throughout the experimental period of 21 days. In addition, extensive thrombus formation occurred within 3 days after injury. The next experiment involved 124 mice and evaluated the effect of anticoagulants on the neointimal and thrombotic response. Mice received aspirin, heparin, or vehicle-only time-release pellets. Both anticoagulants significantly decreased the neointimal and thrombotic responses. The results of this study validate our animal model as being consistent with the Response to Injury Hypothesis of atherogenesis.