Clinical Research – Active Areas of Research

Metabolic Surgery

The Metabolic Surgery Research Group, a unit of the Division of Surgical Research as well as the Diabetes and Obesity Institute, is an interdisciplinary research team composed of basic scientists and clinicians from both campuses of our university. The Group, supported by continuous NIH funding for over three decades, is focused on basic, translational and clinical research in the metabolic syndrome, a group of inter-related diseases that includes type 2 diabetes, dyslipidemias, hypertension, non-alcoholic steatohepatitis, polycystic ovary syndrome, among others.

Our investigations include the following major areas:

• The molecular mechanism, especially the intestinal signaling, underlying the metabolic syndrome
• Muscle metabolism in exercise and the metabolic syndrome
• The epidemiology of type 2 diabetes and its possible relationship to organophosphates and heavy metals in the environment
• The role of micronutrient deficiencies in the late neurological complications following metabolic surgery
• The effects of diets on muscle metabolism

Trauma Surgery and Critical Care

• Advances in the management of soft tissue infection
• Resource use and allocation in patient transportation and transfer
• Special populations in eastern NC trauma: the elderly, the incarcerated
• Management of snakebite injuries
• Firearm injuries
• Factors involved in trauma recidivism

Transplant Surgery

• Evolving approaches to detecting acute allograft rejection
• Exploring roles for robotic approaches in transplant surgery

Surgical Oncology

• Disparities in cancer care among rural and minority populations
• Effects of the Affordable Care Act on cancer care delivery
• Patient reported experience of cancer care and its association with quality of care delivery
• Relationship between age at diagnosis and breast cancer prognosis
• Short-term surgical outcomes following hepatobiliary and pancreas surgery