Experts in Surgery, Urogynecology Honored at #AGS19 for Expanding Geriatrics Expertise in Other Spheres

Advancing long-term care (LTC) for older people across health specialties, the American Geriatrics Society (AGS) and the AGS Health in Aging Foundation recently announced that Courtney Balentine, MD, MPH, of the University of Texas Southwestern and Candace Yvonne Parker-Autry, MD, of Wake Forest School of Medicine, will receive this year’s Jeffrey H Silverstein Memorial Award for Emerging Investigators in the Surgical and Related Medical Specialties. Presented at the AGS 2019 Annual Scientific Meeting (#AGS19, held May 2-4 in Portland, OR), the award recognized Drs Balentine and Parker-Autry for accelerating research at the intersection of geriatrics and other specialties—research which could hold the key to better and more coordinated LTC moving forward.

“Our country is changing as we age, and our health care needs to follow suit,” noted Laurie G Jacobs, MD, AGSF, AGS president. “In their efforts to build connections and expertise beyond geriatrics, Dr Balentine and Dr Parker-Autry prove that our colleagues from across medicine can not only become proficient in the care we all need as we age but also can build a rich body of research to push that care to new heights.”

An Assistant Professor of Surgery, Dr Balentine specializes in minimizing disruptions to older patient’s lives and improving recovery and independence following operations to treat cancer. His #AGS19 presentation, “An Implementation Assessment of the Virtual Acute Care for Elders (ACE) Program,” is the first formal implementation evaluation of the Virtual ACE platform’s application in surgery. Developed to address the shortage of geriatric specialists across the United States, Virtual ACE involves a combination of training for bedside nurses and building assessments, protocols, tracking systems, and standardized postoperative order sets to improve care for older individuals. Dr Balentine and his colleagues conducted interviews with more than 30 physicians, nurses, hospital administrators, and other colleagues involved in implementing Virtual ACE in the surgical ward of a specialty hospital. Stakeholders indicated that Virtual ACE empowered nurses and other staff to identify patients at risk for difficult recovery and also helped connect staff to tools for effectively addressing patient needs and communication between partners on the health care team. According to Dr Balentine’s research, Virtual ACE represents a promising approach for reducing many of surgery’s serious consequences for older adults.

An Assistant Professor of Female Pelvic Medicine and Reconstructive Surgery, Dr Parker-Autry also has built a broader home for geriatrics—in this instance, at the intersection of 2 important fields: urology and gynecology. In the work she presented at #AGS19, “Phenotyping Functional Impairment in Older Women with Urinary Incontinence,” Dr Parker-Autry and her colleagues examined the connection between urinary incontinence, physical performance, and the weakness associated with sarcopenia among older women. They uncovered that older women who had difficulty with mobility, poor balance, and weak leg muscles had more severe urinary incontinence compared with women without difficulty getting around. This data confirms that urinary incontinence and physical performance are intimately related. Therefore, consideration of physical performance, mobility, balance, and muscle strength of older women should be considered in the management of their urinary incontinence symptoms. The researchers now are deepening our understanding of this relationship by examining not only the benefit of conservative therapy for urinary incontinence that includes pelvic floor muscle exercises but also how effectively it decreases urinary incontinence symptoms in older women.  

The Silverstein Memorial Award is one of several honors conferred by the AGS at its Annual Scientific Meeting. The 2019 award recipients include more than 20 health care leaders representing the depth and breadth of disciplines championing care for older adults. To access meeting materials—including poster abstracts and presenter slide sets—visit Meeting.AmericanGeriatrtics.org.