Julia Berian
University of Wisconsin-Madison, WI·Medicine & Clinical Research·Early-career
Older adults need surgery more and more often, and they suffer more complications afterward than younger patients. Many of the factors that raise their risk are often missed in routine planning before surgery.
- Fields
Medicine & Clinical Research
Public Health & Epidemiology
Engineering
- Topics
geriatric surgery
older adults
preoperative comprehensive geriatric assessment
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Mar 2028
What they work on
- Map the preoperative comprehensive geriatric assessment (pCGA) process for older adults having major abdominal surgery, and identify system-level barriers and facilitators to its use with systems-engineering methods.
- Co-design, together with users, an implementation package for pCGA suited to a diverse older patient population at a large academic hospital and at an affiliated community hospital.
- Pilot test and refine the pCGA implementation package, collecting early data on adoption and effectiveness to prepare for a randomized hybrid implementation-effectiveness trial.
More about the research
These include physical strength, taking many medications at once (polypharmacy), nutrition, memory and thinking, mental health, and support at home. A preoperative comprehensive geriatric assessment (pCGA) is a structured check-up that looks at and treats these factors before an operation. It has been shown to reduce complications, deaths and hospital stays. National guidelines recommend it, but there is little practical guidance on how to set it up, so mostly only a few academic centers use it.
Why it matters
Older adults having major surgery often face complications, loss of function, cognitive decline, extra healthcare use and death. A practical, adaptable way to deliver geriatric assessments before surgery could help community hospitals, not just academic centers, offer this proven practice. This could prevent avoidable complications and deaths for a diverse population of older patients and save healthcare resources.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Mehul Raval
Northwestern University, IL·Medicine & Clinical Research
Optimize the ERAS Neonatal Guidelines for newborn intestinal surgery through a modified Delphi consensus process with clinicians, parents and caregivers, and other stakeholders.
Gita Mody
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, NC·Medicine & Clinical Research·Early-career
Identify the optimal survey and alert features and clinic workflow for an electronic patient-reported outcome (ePRO) system that monitors symptoms after thoracic surgery.
Daniel Liebzeit
University of Iowa, IA·Medicine & Clinical Research
Identify barriers and facilitators to adding the 4Ms of age-friendly care to hospital-to-home transitions through interviews with older adults, caregivers, clinicians, administrators and community service professionals.
The school
University of Wisconsin-Madison: 91 labs on PI Pages, $1.9B a year on research, 854 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
A start for your email. Fill in the brackets.