Date/Time
Date(s) - 11/13/2017
3:00 pm

Dr. Victoria Bird is from Lima, Peru. She is a Board-Certified Urologist. She studied medicine at the University of Madison, in Wisconsin and completed her Urology residency at the University of Iowa. She joined the University of Miami before joining the University of Florida as an Assistant Professor. She has served as a medical missionary in Haiti and continues her service in the local free medical clinics in Gainesville. She is fluent in Spanish and frequently uses her Spanish in the clinical setting. She has worked at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke before going into medicine, mainly using electrophysiologic techniques to study single channel abnormalities in Alzheimer’s disease.  She is collaborating actively with BME as a mentor for PhD students and undergraduate students. In addition, she has been awarded funding for development of medical devices with the Department of Chemical Engineering. She is the CO-PI of a multiple PI grant to NASA for devices to be used at the ISS by astronauts pertaining to urologic care. Currently she actively serves at the UF Medical School Admissions Committee, the Medical School Curriculum Committee, College of Medicine Faculty Council and University of Florida Senate.

Abstract:
Kidney stone (KS) disease prevalence has increased in the United States from 3.2% in 1980, to 5.2% in 1994, to 8.8 in 2010, to 10.1 in 2014. Along with increased in prevalence, a significant escalation in kidney stone-related cost was reported by the Urologic Diseases in America report, 2012. KS is the costliest urologic disease in the United States when compared to the costs of other urologic diseases in aggregate together including prostate cancer. An increase in prevalence poses a huge economic burden on society. The cost of diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of KS disease in 2007 was estimated to be ~$4 billion and, due to population growth alone, is projected to increase by more than $780 million by 2030. The presence of KS also places affected individuals at a 50-67% higher risk of developing chronic kidney disease. There are several surgical treatments for KS, the most commonly used is ureteroscopy. Ureteroscopy procedure related costs are related to operating room time, ancillary equipment to remove KS, and damage to the ureteroscope during procedure.  Efforts to decrease ureteroscopy cost include use of “dusting” or breaking the stone to very small fragments or dust, which generally decreases OR time, and requires minimal ancillary equipment to remove KS fragments.  However, significant controversy relating to this technique is the dust left behind which could be a nidus for another KS.  We propose a novel way to expeditiously remove the “dust” left behind by using a solution to dissolve dust particles mainly composed of calcium oxalate and protein.