Camilo R. Gomez

Camilo Ramiro Gomez, (born September 12, 1960) is an American neurologist, medical educator, and researcher. He is one of the first 100 vascular neurologists certified by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology (ABPN),^[1][2] and one of the founders of the subspecialty of interventional neurology in the United States,^[3]

He has written in his specialty ^{[4][5][6][7][8][9]} and is credited with having coined the phrase Time is Brain! to denote the urgency required in the treatment of stroke patients.^[4] He also introduced the term "Code Stroke" as an in-hospital method for summoning specialists to the stroke patient bedside.^[5]

Early life

Gomez was born in Holguín, Cuba and emigrated in 1965 as a consequence of the emergence of the Fidel Castro regime. His family settled in Caracas, Venezuela, where Gomez attended the Fray Luis Amigo and Santo Tomas de Villanueva catholic schools. He received a M.D. from the Universidad Central del Este in San Pedro de Macorís, Dominican Republic in 1981. As a result of the political deterioration of Venezuela, he emigrated to the United States to continue postgraduate education in Saint Louis University

Career

Upon completing his Residency in neurology at St. Louis University, he was appointed to the faculty as director of the stroke center. He built a neurovascular ultrasound laboratory and introduced the new diagnostic technique of Transcranial Doppler. This earned him the first EME Transcranial Doppler Research Award in 1990, and caught the attention of Sylvia N. Souers, widow of the late Admiral Sidney W. Souers, the first director of the Central Intelligence Group, who had been said to have succumbed to a stroke. Mrs. Souers later agreed to donate a large portion of her estate to the creation of the Souers Stroke Institute, which Gomez directed until 1995.

Since the early 1990s, partnering with interventional cardiologists, he began to apply recently acquired cardiac technology to the brain circulation.^[6] In 1995, he was recruited^[10] by the University of Alabama at Birmingham and became the founding director of its Comprehensive Stroke Center, a post that he held until 2003. Since then, he has been in private practice, while continuing to lecture and participate in a variety of research projects, including the Reasons for Geographic and Racial Differences in Stroke (REGARDS),^[11] a federally funded project intended to uncover the underlying causes for the existence of the Stroke Belt.

Neuroimaging

He joined the American Society of Neuroimaging (ASN) in the mid-1980s. Originally interested in the diagnostic vascular ultrasound, he later ventured into computed tomography (CT), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and angiography.

Interventional neurology

Following his work in St. Louis,^[6] he moved to UAB where he continued to collaborate with the interventional cardiologists. An additional opportunity for collaboration with interventional neuroradiologists of the National Institute of Neurology and Neurosurgery in Mexico City was also made available, leading to an exchange that lasted throughout his tenure at UAB.

There was significant turmoil in the 1990s with respect to which of three major specialties,^{[12][13][14][15][16]} neurology, neurosurgery and neuroradiology had the right to perform neuroendovascular procedures. Traditionally spearheaded by neuroradiologists, the subspecialty had attracted the attention of both neurologists and neurosurgeons, leading to a bitter turf war. In the midst of this, the president of the American Academy of Neurology (AAN) appointed Gomez to head a task force charged with the negotiations with the other two specialties for the right of neurologists to be part of this field. As a result of this effort, vascular neurology became an accredited subspecialty,^[2] and a prerequisite for interventional neurology. Eventually, all specialists interested in this discipline would become recognized, regardless of their parent specialty, as having joined the field of neurointerventional surgery designated by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME).

He has experience with procedures such as elective stenting of the basilar artery and other intracranial vessels. His work on mechanical neuroendovascular rescue of acute ischemic stroke^[17] preceded all the work that led to the more recent approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) of devices specifically designed for this purpose, including the MERCI Retriever^[18] and, more recently, the Penumbra, Solitaire and Trevo Pro devices.

Urgent and intensive stroke care

In the early 1990s he coined the phrase Time is Brain!, as an argument for the need to expedite the treatment of stroke victims at a time when this was not the norm.^[4] Also around that time, he introduced one of the first experiences using a "Code Stroke" system for managing these patients, in parallel to the existing procedures for treating patients with cardiac arrest.^[5] Upon his arrival at UAB, he created a vascular and critical care neurology clinical service, dedicated to the management of the sickest neurologic patients. As part of this work, he promoted the use of hypothermia for the management of critically ill neurologic patients, including stroke.^[19] This and other of his practices were highlighted in a 2001 article and television piece by CNN.^[20] After arriving in Birmingham, he partnered with the Birmingham Regional Emergency Medical Services System (BREMSS) to construct a regional stroke transportation system that was unique in the country. The product served as a model for national guidelines.^[21][22][23] It became operational in 2000 and, for the first time, used a dedicated computerized system to link dedicated stroke centers within the six counties that surround the city of Birmingham, allowing them to work in a symbiotic way.^[24] The system included a process for approving stroke centers based upon a set of criteria, predating the current stroke center certification process by the Joint Commission.

Military career

In 1986 he became a citizen of the United States, and a Captain in the U.S. Army Medical Corps. He became a member of the Saint Louis University Medical Detachment of the 21st General Hospital, 102nd Army Reserve Command (ARCOM). He spent his reserve time largely in St. Louis. In December 1990, he was called to active duty in support of Operation Desert Storm,. He was honorably discharged in 1993.

Honors and awards

Gomez was the commencement speaker for the graduation ceremonies at Universidad Central del Este in 1988 and is a member of the Phi Kappa Phi and Beta Gamma Sigma honor societies in business. He has been listed in several editions of Best Doctors in America.^[25] In 1990, he was awarded the first Eden Medical Electronics (EME) Transcranial Doppler Research Award for his work on cerebral perfusion during cardiopulmonary resuscitation and, in 2000, the Birmingham Regional EMS (BREMSS) awarded him the R. Floyd Yarborough EMS Award for being instrumental in organizing the care of stroke patients in the counties that surround the city of Birmingham, Alabama. He then received the Interventional Pioneer Award by the Society of Vascular and Interventional Neurology (SVIN) during their inaugural meeting in 2007.^[26]

Business degree

In 2006, he completed and earned the degree of Master in Business Administration (MBA) from the Physician Executive MBA (PEMBA) program at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville.^[27]

Personal life

He married Sandra Maria Lopez Quiroga in 1981, but they divorced in 2007 after having had two children.

Publications (books only)

• Tegeler CH, Babikian VL and Gomez CR. Neurosonology. Mosby-Yearbook Publishers. St. Louis, MO. 1996
• McCartney JP, Thomas-Lukes KM and Gomez CR. Handbook of Transcranial Doppler. Springer-Verlag Publishers. New York, 1997.
• Geyer JD and Gomez CR. Stroke: A Practical Approach. Lippincot. Philadelphia, PA. 2009.
• Gomez CR. The Downgrading of American Healthcare, On-Demand Publishing. 2012

References