Media Coverage

Even though nearly 1,500 babies have been delivered at Northwestern Medicine Lake Forest Hospital since the facility opened a year ago, one delivery that melds both the old and the new continues to stick out for officials. Roughly a year ago on March 2, 2018, Josh and Allison Ferguson, of Lake Bluff, arrived at the old hospital to deliver their child, Levi Scott Ferguson, who entered the world at 6:48 a.m., via a cesarean section. The moment turned serious when Allison felt a sharp pain.

Medical School Overview: The Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University (Feinberg) has an application deadline of Nov. 1. The application fee at Northwestern University (Feinberg) is $95. Its tuition is full-time: $59,986. The faculty-student ratio at Northwestern University (Feinberg) is 2.7:1. The Feinberg School of Medicine has 1,808 full-time faculty on staff. Students at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago never receive letter grades. Instead, first and second year students are graded on a pass/fail basis, and third and fourth year students receive grades of honors, high pass, pass, and fail. Three afternoons a week are blocked off for optional activities. The Feinberg School of Medicine also offers various graduate research programs, including an M.D./M.M. program, which grants a doctor of medicine degree and a master of management degree through the Kellogg Graduate School of Management in five years, and a 27-month long physical therapy program.

Dr. Danesh Alam calls the drug a breakthrough, particularly in treating suicidal thoughts. Alam is the medical director of Behavioral Health Services at Northwestern Medicine Central DuPage Hospital, where clinical trials involving esketamine are being conducted. “I feel that will be probably the next frontier for this drug – where you actually have medication to treat suicidal thoughts very quickly, which makes this a remarkable option.” Spravato will be administered under the supervision of health care professionals rather than dispensed to patients for at-home use to mitigate potential misuse and abuse, as well as allow health care providers to monitor patients for side effects, like dissociation and sedation, according to the FDA.

Thanks to one prolific inventor in particular, Northwestern University has had a series of high-profile wins in a relatively short period of time—reporting nearly $8 million in licensing revenue for fiscal 2018. Late last month, the university unveiled John Rogers’ latest technology: flexible wireless body sensors that monitor premature babies, eliminating the need for constraining wires and tape in the neonatal intensive care unit. Rogers joined Northwestern in 2016 from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he started working on the NICU sensors. As a result, both universities have some intellectual property rights for the project.

Rush has stayed relatively quiet on the merger front in recent years while other local chains, like Northwestern Medicine, Amita Health and what’s now Advocate Aurora Health, have expanded aggressively through acquisitions. Last year, Rush called off a planned merger with Little Company of Mary Hospital & Health Care Centers for undisclosed reasons. However, it has added a string of new ambulatory care centers, including multispecialty outpatient facilities in the South Loop and Oak Brook, as well as a $473 million Near West Side outpatient center scheduled to open in 2022.

In 2016, the number of adolescents killed by a firearm in Chicago was about three times the national rate. But for the city’s population of young black men, that rate was nearly 50 times the national rate, according to a new report analyzing such deaths among 15- to 19-year-olds in Chicago between 2013 and 2017. “This is clearly a public health crisis for adolescents in Chicago,” said Maryann Mason, principal investigator at Lurie Children’s and research assistant professor of pediatrics at Northwestern University, in a statement.

“The handle is made from a solid metal that is steady, strong and comfortable to hold,” said Dr. Edidiong Kaminska, a board-certified dermatologist at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago, Illinois and a fellow of the American Academy of Dermatology. “It comes with five diamond-like coated blades for a close shave and a water-activated ribbon of moisture around the blades that improves glide and helps protect the skin from nicks and cuts.”

“That means female scientists are disadvantaged from the beginning of their careers and the kind of scientific and clinical questions they ask are less likely to be answered,” said study co-author Teresa Woodruff of the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. “If women are disadvantaged from the beginning of their careers, they are less likely to persist in science and medicine,” Woodruff said by email. “Less diversity in scientists means less diversity in how the next generation of clinicians are trained.”

“The existing literature to date is quite mixed with regards to the issue of whether there is or is not an association between isotretinoin [Accutane] use and increased risk of depression,” explained study author Dr. Bethanee Schlosser. “Our retrospective, population-based study shows no increased risk of depression in patients taking isotretinoin, compared to patients with acne but not taking isotretinoin,” she said. Still, while she found the results reassuring and a mirror of what she sees in her clinical practice, it remains “critical that patients maintain open communication with their dermatologists,” Schlosser added. “It is vital that dermatologists query patients about the impact of their acne on their mood, as well as any underlying medical or mental health history, which may influence selection of treatment,” she said.

The sensors – one above the baby’s heart and the other on the infant’s heel – “are almost like an electronic temporary tattoo,” said study coauthor John Rogers, director of the Center for Bio-Integrated Electronics at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. “They gently, non-invasively laminate onto the surface of the skin. They are imperceptible. You don’t even know they are there.” Standard sensors can damage a premature baby’s skin, he added. “Premature babies, especially those at gestational ages less than 30 weeks, have skin that is highly underdeveloped, “Rogers said. “It’s very common that these babies receive injury to the skin when peeling away the tapes.”