Newswise — LOS ANGELES (Jan. 27, 2012) – Asma M. Moheet, MD, has been named director of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center’s Neurocritical Care Fellowship program, a two-year training program for doctors who have completed a neurology residency and wish to specialize in neurological intensive care.

Moheet is one of three neurointensivists who oversee patient care in Cedars-Sinai’s highly sophisticated, 12-bed neuro ICU, which treats a high volume of patients suffering from a range of neurological and neurosurgical diagnoses.

“As an urban, Level 1 trauma center with a new, state-of-the-art neuro intensive care unit and 958 licensed beds, Cedars-Sinai offers an extraordinary learning environment. Graduates will be prepared to function independently as intensive care physicians and be qualified to sit for the Neurocritical Care Board Examination,” Moheet said.

Moheet, a member of the hospital’s Code Brain team that provides emergency stroke intervention, noted that many Cedars-Sinai programs – including neurology and neurosurgery – rank high in U.S. News & World Report’s annual hospital ratings and other measures of care quality. Cedars-Sinai is a regional stroke referral center for complicated cases. The Stroke Program has received the Gold Award from the American Stroke Association, is certified as a Primary Stroke Center by The Joint Commission and is an Approved Stroke Center of Los Angeles County’s Emergency Medical Services Agency.

The fellowship is accredited by the United Council of Neurologic Subspecialties. Applications for the 2013 position are being accepted now, with candidate interviews starting this spring.

Moheet, board certified in neurology, was a clinical fellow and instructor at the University of California, San Francisco, before joining Cedars-Sinai in 2010. She received her medical degree from the University of Missouri, Kansas City, in a six-year integrated bachelor’s and medical degree program, completing her internal medicine internship and neurology residency at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation. She held a courtesy faculty appointment at the Cleveland Clinic while pursuing the fellowship in neurovascular and neurocritical care at UCSF.

Besides caring for patients and teaching, Moheet has research under way in drug and mechanical interventions for stroke, brain-monitoring techniques, patient safety and medical ethics.

Cedars-Sinai’s neuro ICU is part of the Department of Neurology, chaired by Patrick D. Lyden, MD, the Carmen and Louis Warschaw Chair in Neurology. He is an internationally known researcher who is leading clinical trials on therapeutic hypothermia as a way to prevent brain injury following stroke. He was one of the key researchers in the major clinical trial leading to Food and Drug Administration approval in 1996 of tPA – tissue plasminogen activator – still the only proven, approved drug for stroke treatment.

After joining Cedars-Sinai in 2009, Lyden, an American Academy of Neurology fellow, reinforced key existing programs and set the department on a course to expand its research, educational and clinical offerings. The department will relocate to the 450,000-square-foot Advanced Health Sciences Pavilion when it opens in 2013.

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