This profile is part of a series to highlight the researchers who will be honored at a ceremony for UNMC’s 2017 Scientist Laureate, Distinguished Scientist and New Investigator Award recipients.
- Name: Keely Buesing, M.D.
- Title: Assistant professor, UNMC Department of Surgery
- Joined UNMC: August 2013
- Hometown: Davey, Neb.
The New Investigator Award
New Investigator Awards go to outstanding UNMC scientists who in the past two years have secured their first funding from the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Defense or other national sources.
New Investigators also had to demonstrate scholarly activity such as publishing their research and/or presenting their findings at national conventions.
Research focus:
Oxygenated microbubbles (OMBs)
The goal of my research is: To investigate OMBs as a viable option for improving oxygenation in patients with severe acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), or respiratory failure.
My research will make a difference because: There are very few options for patients with severe respiratory failure. One option — extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, or ECMO — is a widely-discussed method of pulmonary bypass that can be beneficial in the right patient population. However, one of the risks inherent to ECMO is associated with the need for anticoagulation to keep its circuit operating smoothly. For our traumatically injured patients, this risk is a “hard stop” to using ECMO since we don’t want to worsen their coexisting injuries.
Together with my coinvestigators in Lincoln and Colorado, we hope to provide a method of supplemental oxygen that does not require anticoagulants, is easy to administer and does not use bulky equipment, and has a lower risk profile than ECMO. This would significantly impact the treatment plan of many traumatically injured patients.
The best advice I’ve ever been given is:
You can fail at what you don’t want to do, so you might as well take a chance on doing what you love.
Three things you may not know about me are:
- It took a long time for me to start correcting people when they called me “Kelly.” At my third-grade parent-teachers conference, my mom had to interrupt the teacher to ask if she was speaking about her daughter.
- I have a bit of a lead foot. I lost all but one of the points on my driver’s license before I hit my 17th birthday. I haven’t gotten a speeding ticket since.
- Free time activities: estate sales, restoring antique furniture, and spending summer weekends riding dirt bikes and UTVs near Castana, Iowa.
Congratulations on your work and recognition, Dr. Buesing! Oh, and I just went to Google maps to take a look at Castana.