In November 2021, the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB) community and guests gathered for the inauguration of Bruce E. Jarrell, MD, FACS, as the seventh president of UMB. Dr. Jarrell stepped into this role in 2020 amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, guiding critical efforts to address this global health crisis with world-changing vaccine research, treatments, community service and outreach, and leadership across the state and beyond.

Under Jarrell’s leadership, UMB remains one of Baltimore’s most powerful anchor institutions and continues to effect real and lasting change by improving health, creating wealth, and advancing social justice in the city, the state, and around the world. This is particularly true in today’s COVID-19 climate.

 

Central to President Jarrell’s vision is that UMB expand on its success by motivating students, faculty, and staff to embrace the university’s core values, which are rooted in service, a commitment to Maryland, and ultimately improving the world. UMB inspires passionate people to apply solutions to the pressing problems facing humankind, and its health care, human services, and law professionals create innovative solutions where others see only problems.

“When I look at UMB, I see an environment that encourages innovation and creativity,” Jarrell says. “I’m surrounded by students and employees who are committed to improving the health and well-being of the people in our community and around the state. That is the magic of UMB, and it’s the secret to our great success.”

 

To maintain UMB’s standing as Maryland’s premier human services institution, these are President Jarrell’s priorities:

• Commitment to excellence in education. UMB works to attract, retain, and educate the best and brightest scholars, staff, and faculty through efforts such as the President’s Initiative on Education, scholarship programs that create opportunities for more students, and by remaining an employer of choice.

• Commitment to working for equity and justice. UMB accepts the responsibility to help improve the health and well-being of underserved populations in Maryland by expanding access in areas of need across the state, supporting our Community Engagement Center, and fostering educational programs to support opportunity and advancement for disadvantaged communities.

• Commitment to statewide collaborations. UMB is maintaining and growing its strong partnership with the University of Maryland Medical System, sustaining and propelling innovation through its collaboration with the University of Maryland, College Park under the MPowering the State initiative, and expanding relationships with other key institutions across Maryland.

• Commitment to innovation and discovery. UMB is preparing for the future with a strong focus on innovation and discovery. The university is expanding its $682 million research enterprise, strengthening its community-based research activities, and developing more interdisciplinary research programs and projects.

Through these efforts, UMB achieves its mission to improve the human condition and serve the public good of Maryland and society at large through education, research, clinical care, and service. Amidst unprecedented challenges in today’s world, UMB is evolving and developing critical innovations toward changing the future today.

 

UMB is Maryland’s public health, law, and human services university, a leading U.S. institution for graduate and professional education, and a prominent academic health center that combines cutting-edge biomedical research and exceptional clinical care.

The university enrolls more than 7,200 students in six nationally ranked professional schools and its interdisciplinary Graduate School, conferring most of the professional practice doctoral degrees awarded in Maryland each year. Serving as a powerhouse economic engine for Maryland, UMB delivers care and services that spur growth, and, in partnership with the University of Maryland Medical Center and affiliated physician practices, the university stimulates nearly $8 billion in economic activity each year, generating 17,000 jobs and yielding $13 in economic activity for each $1 of state general fund appropriation.

UMB provides direct health, employment, legal, educational, and social services to underserved communities and impacts the future by addressing the needs of the most vulnerable populations and fostering the next generation of leaders in innovation, discovery, outreach, and economic impact.

To learn more about UMB, visit www.umaryland.edu.

“How to properly contour and highlight, without looking overdone.”

Kristin Lee Magro, sales and marketing coordinator, Baltimore Sun Media Group

“Heat your eyelash curler for 10 seconds prior to using. It holds curl and acts similar to your curling iron.”
Susan Paulson, stay-at-home mom

“Use a drop of Visine to take the red out of a pimple or blemish.”
Nina Kasniunas, assistant professor, Goucher College

“Ignore beauty trends and expensive crap that doesn’t work. Learn to love myself. Eat a healthy diet and drink lots of water.”
Anne Fresia, senior research subjects specialist, The Johns Hopkins University

“Using toothpaste for a breakout. Gone by the morning!”
William Grace, director of catering, Westin Annapolis Hotel

Q: How do juices differ from smoothies? Juices are made by extracting the juice and separating the pulp from the produce. Smoothies are blended whole, keeping the fiber in the drink.  

Q: What is the best way to make them at home? To make juice at home, you’ll need a juicer. I use a Breville at home, it’s really easy to make a quick juice. It’s a good, inexpensive starter juicer. For smoothies, you’ll need a traditional blender or a bullet-type blender. I’ve become a bit spoiled and really only want to use a Vitamix. No other blender compares in my opinion. 

Q: What are the essential ingredients to both? I always have a bunch of apples, cucumbers, celery, and lemons in my fridge. I like to have some fun and add mint, ginger, and fresh turmeric.   

Q: Is it okay to use frozen fruit or non-organic? Totally. Think about other stuff you eat. More than likely, this is trumping anything else you put in your body.

JUICE RECIPE: The Virgin Mary

YIELD: Varies depending on your juicer, use a measuring cup to prepare.

INGREDIENTS: 

• 4 ounces carrots
• 5 ounces tomatoes
• 5 ounces celery
• ½ lemon
• 1 clove garlic
• ¼ beet
• 1-inch cube fresh horseradish
• ½ teaspoon raw apple-cider vinegar 
• Thai or spicy pepper of your choice

SMOOTHIE RECIPE: Turmeric Lassie


INGREDIENTS:

• 5 oz Brazil Nut Mylk (recipe below)
• 
1/2 cup frozen or fresh Mango
• 
1 cube of fresh turmeric or 1/2 tsp. dried turmeric
• 
2 pinches of cardamom
• 
1/4 tsp vanilla


Brazil Nut Mylk: 

• Soak 1/2 cup Brazil nuts in water over night
• 
Drain water and blend with 1-cup fresh water until completely smooth.
• 
Strain through a fine sieve.  
• You can add as much water as you want to the desired thickness you like.

Two-dozen curious environmentalists, taking a bike tour of something described as the Harris Creek Watershed, stop pedaling, and pull up in front of the Patterson Park branch of the Enoch Pratt Free Library. Their tires come to a rest over several large, metal stormwater grates. They’ve already toured Real Food Farm on the grounds of Lake Clifton High School, where they were told the watershed’s headwaters begin. They’ve toured Duncan Street’s Miracle Farm, built on a vacant block in East Baltimore. They’ve ridden south past the Baltimore Recycling Center, Collington Square Park, the Reggie Lewis Memorial Basketball Courts, and bustling but trash-strewn Frank C. Bocek Park.

However, there’s been no sign—visible or otherwise—of Harris Creek. Not until a whiff of putrid air emanating from the aforementioned storm grates smacks Joy Goodie, atop her bike, square in the nostrils.

“Oh, it smells bad,” blurts Goodie, turning her head just before the stench hits everyone else, including her husband and two kids. “It’s repugnant.”

“That’s Harris Creek,” deadpans Leanna Wetmore, program coordinator with Banner Neighborhoods and a tour volunteer with organizer Ben Peterson. Wetmore notes the creek now runs entirely beneath the city, long ago co-opted into the massive underground storm-water system. “The water’s visible if you look down there,” Wetmore adds as a few brave souls take a peek. “When there’s a really big storm, the drains back up and flood this whole area. It can move cars parked here.”

Hard to imagine today, but Maryland Historical Society paintings from the late 1800s actually show boats sailing on the creek through Patterson Park to Canton and the harbor.

Peterson explains to the group—still slightly stunned by the odorous discovery of Harris Creek—that the city’s century-old sewage pipes (some made of wood) run parallel to equally antiquated stormwater pipes. When the outdated sewage lines inevitably bust, raw waste flows into the stormwater lines, entering the harbor untreated. And when thundershowers just as inevitably overwhelm the stormwater system, trash and chemical pollutants from streets, rooftops, and pavement get whisked downstream.

Of course, it’s not just buried Harris Creek that is regularly debased, but the Jones Falls, Gwynns Falls, Middle Branch and Patapsco River, among other harbor tributaries. At the tour’s end, where Harris Creek empties into the harbor, not far from Canton’s Waterfront Park, where residents once swam and crabbed and local clergy dunked their flock in full-immersion baptisms, frustrated activist Raymond Bahr calls healing the harbor, “mission impossible.”

And, yet, three years ago, the Waterfront Partnership—along with a mix of nonprofits, business leaders, city officials, and harbor advocates—set a public goal, in consultation with environmental scientists: Make the harbor swimmable and fishable by 2020.

“Just think, to not only stand at the edge of the harbor but to dangle your feet in the water and jump in,” Waterfront Partnership President Laurie Schwartz suggested when the Healthy Harbor initiative and “swimmable, fishable” goal was announced in 2009. “Downtown Chicago has a beach . . . why can’t we?” It’s a good question, but only last year the Maryland Department of the Environment shot down an effort by the Baltimore Rowing Club to host a triathlon.

At the same time, other cities have reclaimed their iconic waterways, at least to an extent. The Boston Harbor is now referred to as a “jewel” by the EPA decades after The Standells mocked the city’s harbor in their 1966 hit “Dirty Water” and the first George Bush blamed Michael Dukakis for dumping “500 million gallons of barely treated sewage” daily into the harbor during the 1988 presidential campaign. Striped bass and shellfish can be caught in Boston Harbor today, and recreational swimming has returned as well. New York City, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C., all hold annual swimming events in the tested waters of the Hudson, the Schuylkill, and the Potomac.

By coincidence, the morning following the Harris Creek tour, the Waterfront Partnership released the most comprehensive report ever on the harbor’s water quality. The grade: C-. Those who compiled the report, however, admit the harbor was scored on a large curve. The C- indicated that the harbor’s overall water quality was acceptable only 40 percent of the time; a score of 50 would’ve been considered a mid-range “C,” indicating that water quality met acceptable standards on half of the days.

“As it was, in our system, the grade was just percentage points above a D+,” says Baltimore Harbor Waterkeeper Tina Meyers, who assisted in compiling the report card. “If you used high-school grades, it would be F’s all the way from zero to 60 percent.”

The study measured nitrogen, phosphorus levels, chlorophyll, dissolved oxygen, and water clarity—sunlight being necessary for healthy underwater plants and organisms—at 28 locations from the Inner Harbor and Fort McHenry to South Baltimore’s Middle Branch area. Or, all water west of the Harbor Tunnel.

The study did not quantify levels of trash, which doesn’t have comparable standards—except that you know it when you see it. “Litter wasn’t tested. If it was, it would receive a failing grade,” says Adam Lindquist, the Waterfront Partnership’s Healthy Harbor coordinator.

Lindquist doesn’t dismiss the 2020 “swimmable, fishable” goal, but acknowledges the pace of efforts needs to be stepped up. “It’s an aggressive goal, but you need to set goals and then gather data to measure progress.”

District 1 Councilman James Kraft, the City Council’s strongest environmental advocate, isn’t quite ready to dismiss the 2020 target, either. He emphasizes, however, “We need to do something really bold. These grades are important, but we have a long, long way to go.”

At the June release of the Healthy Harbor report, Kraft highlighted two bills he’s sponsoring or co-sponsoring to help clean up the harbor. One is a ban on polystyrene—the ubiquitous carryout foam containers and cups that all too often end up floating in the city’s waterways. The other proposal is a 10-cent fee on plastic bags from retailers, convenience stores, and supermarkets. He hopes each passes, but the polystyrene vote was postponed shortly before Baltimore went to press.

Both Kraft and Councilman Brandon Scott note the positive impact a bag fee in D.C. has had on the Anacostia River. Scott believes the measure would change consumer behavior and tweeted that getting Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and her administration “to agree to use it [revenue from the bill] for green initiatives is key” to the legislation’s overall success.

“Sometimes in Baltimore, we’re guilty of living in a vacuum. There are things we see working in other cities, but we keep doing things the way we’ve done them forever,” Scott says. “For Baltimore to move into the 21st century, to become a sustainable city, we have to change that mindset.

“We have more plastic bags in the streams than fish,” Scott adds. “If you go to Herring Run Park, all you see is plastic bags.”

Beyond plastic bags and foam cups and containers, Kraft dreams of one day opening Harris Creek up again near Canton’s Lakewood Street. More significantly, he’d really like to see the Jones Falls opened up from the Penn Station area down to the Inner Harbor, where it’s buried under concrete. It’s a process known as “daylighting” and has been done with the Saw Mill River, for example, buried for some 90 years in downtown Yonkers. Partly, it’s an effort to improve aesthetics and return natural landscape to the city, but it would also eliminate pavement and, potentially, runoff. Kraft says it would help Baltimoreans become more conscious of their environment and its value.

“We need to daylight some of these streams we have in Baltimore and take up the concrete,” he says. “We need to study it and make it work. When Sheila [Dixon] was mayor, she talked about wanting to do it with the Jones Falls.”

In the immediate future, Kraft and others say improving stormwater management, starting with a greater cooperation from Department of Public Works, remains the single biggest factor in improving harbor water quality. Kraft says the DPW needs to hand out 5,000 trashcans in under-served areas and do a better job of sweeping streets. At the same time, he adds, as much impervious surface as possible needs to be replaced with parks, trees, and green roofs. Rain gardens and rain barrels can also be used to offset runoff. High-tech materials, such as pervious concrete, can replace traditional parking surfaces as well. The Maryland Science Center, for example, is planning on tearing up its lot in favor of a pervious surface.

It’s exactly the stormwater crises, affecting much of the Chesapeake Bay, that the so-called “rain tax,” passed by the General Assembly, is designed to address. Ten jurisdictions, including Baltimore City and Baltimore, Howard, Anne Arundel, Carroll, and Harford counties, had to establish a stormwater fee structure—generally based on square-footage—by July 1 to fund infrastructure improvements.

“Bacteria [from fecal matter] is actually not the main problem,” says Kraft, who drives a Prius and proudly points to the fact that his Canton waterfront district received the highest mark, a C+, in the Healthy Harbor report. “It’s polluted stormwater that’s making it unhabitable for life, that causes the dead zones and the fish kills.”

That said, sewage spills remain a tremendous problem for Baltimore, and, in fact, the city is under a 2002 EPA consent decree to address “continuing hazards posed by hundreds of illegal wastewater discharges of raw sewage. . . .” The agreement requires the city to complete an extensive sewer upgrade by 2016, a timeline city officials are negotiating to push back several years. Kraft says that the city, despite increasing sewage fees, lacks the funds to complete the overhaul, with an original cost projection of $1 billion, on time. But the work will eventually get done, he says.

“One of the good things is this is not just the ‘greenies’ tilting at windmills, it’s everyone, it’s a unified front,” Kraft says, referring to what he views, finally, as a citywide commitment for cleaning up the harbor. “That’s including leaders in the business community who want this to get done because they see a clean harbor as an economic engine for tourism, for attracting businesses, and for attracting employees.”

Meyers, the harbor’s waterkeeper, goes on the water every Wednesday at 7 a.m. on a 16-foot, Honda C-Dory, gathering samples at precise GPS locations, from beneath the Domino Sugars sign to newly added spots at Bear Creek in Dundalk and Curtis Bay. She’s employed by Blue Water Baltimore, which grew out of five local clean-water organizations in 2010. Also, starting this year, she’s leading teams that track water quality in the Jones Falls and Gwynns Falls.

Meyers studied environmental science and biology at the University of Rochester and has a law degree from SUNY University at Buffalo School of Law. Previously, she worked as an attorney at the University of Maryland School of Law’s Environmental Law Clinic. She says her affinity for the water developed growing up in Buffalo, near Lake Erie, where her father still has a boat. While she wears protective gloves when she dips her hands in the harbor, she remains optimistic about its future. She notes, for example, that even if most of the sewage upgrades, per EPA decree, aren’t finished until 2019, that still fits inside the 2020 timeline.

“I’d say the goal is ‘fishable, swimmable by 2020’ with an asterisk,” Meyers says. “Swimming may not be possible, but boating and working on the water can be made safer from a health standpoint. I’d like it to be safe for someone to drop a line in the water, to fish and crab. At the same time, they should probably release their catch because of the PCBs [polychlorinated biphenyls] and mercury in the sediment—these aren’t just environmental issues, but public-health issues for everyone.

“Sewage, stormwater, trash, toxins—we have all these problems,” Meyers says. “The good news is they are absolutely solvable. I wouldn’t be doing this if I thought otherwise.”

If nothing else, Kraft says, perhaps only half-joking, “These boys I see who are [illegally] crabbing, it’ll be less likely they will be glowing in the dark after they eat their crabs.”

At first glance, the works of art in Kay Redfield Jamison’s sparsely decorated office don’t seem to have much in common. There’s a charcoal drawing of composer Gustav Mahler; a delicate print of Romantic poet Lord Byron; a black-and-white photograph of one of Jamison’s many muses, “confessional” poet Robert Lowell. But beyond their extraordinary contributions to the world of music and poetry, the thread that binds these men—and what particularly interests Jamison, the co-director of The Johns Hopkins Mood Disorders Center and a professor of psychiatry of The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine—is their struggle with bipolar illness (also known as manic-depression), a mood disorder characterized by episodes of severe depression and mania.

Although this enigmatic illness (suffered by more than 10 million people in the United States alone, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness) was first classified dating back to the time of Hippocrates, it has lately found its way into the mainstream, thanks to the success of the feature film Silver Linings Playbook and Showtime’s wildly popular Homeland, whose producer once contacted Jamison to advise on an episode.

Of course, to Jamison, the disease is nothing new: She is one of the most widely regarded experts on mood disorders in the world and has spent the greater part of her 66 years not only studying bipolar illness, but living it. After years as a clinical psychologist first at UCLA and then at Johns Hopkins, she “outed” herself in her 1995 bestselling memoir An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness.

“There were many concerns in writing the book,” admits Jamison, who gave up her clinical practice after An Unquiet Mind came out, but continues to teach Hopkins medical students and residents. She feared that she might lose her license. (She didn’t.) And beyond that, there was a fear of “how one’s work would be perceived once you have this diagnosis on your forehead. . . . it’s very easy to be defined by that.”

There were more personal concerns as well. “In my own WASP military family, you didn’t talk about mental illness,” says Jamison, with a smile. “You are brought up to be private. The first time I got up and spoke publically about this, all I could think about was my grandmother and her white gloves and her hat and her D.A.R. meetings, and what on earth she would be thinking?”

Even in Hopkins’s hallowed halls, Jamison is considered a luminary—known for her ability to offer acute insight on the disease as clinician and patient, as well as for her eloquent writings on mood disorders (among them: the bestselling Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide, Exuberance, and a 1,262-page tome that is considered the definitive textbook on bipolar disorder).

Associate professor of psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine Thomas Styron, whose father, the late literary titan William Styron, was a close friend of Jamison’s, has high praise for her.

“She is an absolute giant in the field of psychiatry as someone who has been able to combine top-notch academic work with this incredible personal story, which has been such a huge service to people who suffer from mental illness,” he says.

Her students are starry-eyed, too. “When medical residents come to look at Hopkins, they say, ‘If I’m here, do I actually get to work with Dr. Jamison?'” says Dr. Karen Swartz, associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Hopkins. “Ray DePaulo [co-director of the Mood Disorders Center] once said, ‘She may be the most famous person with bipolar disorder in the world.'”

She lives the more low-key life of a scholar, though, as she shuttles between the charming circa-1800’s renovated barn in Sparks she shares with her husband, Hopkins cardiologist and professor of medicine Thomas Traill, and their stately 1920s home in Washington, D.C., where Jamison spends most of her time immersed in the life of Lowell, who is the subject of her next book.

“He’s someone I read after my first breakdown when I was 17,” says Jamison, who obtained access to Lowell’s hospital records to write her book. “He has just stuck with me. I am writing about him because I admire him as an artist and a great, great original poet. He was hospitalized 20 times for mania, but he had depressions after each one of them. He was a remarkable man; a remarkable human being.”

Jamison’s husband can’t help but to gush a bit when he discusses his wife’s work. “She’s a major-league scientist,” weighs in Traill, who laughs that their obvious mutual affection for each other can be “nauseating.” “You have to set that against the fact that not only is she someone who wrote a memoir, but she’s also passionate about language and writing. These books come from a prodigious love of words and literature and serious, worked-over writing.”

Given her long list of accolades, it would be easy to assume that Jamison’s disease has scarcely hindered her. But Jamison’s accomplishments—from earning the MacArthur Award to an honorary degree from Brown University to being named Time magazine’s “Hero of Medicine” in 1997—are not the whole story, she is quick to point out.

“My life isn’t my C.V.,” says Jamison. “My professional accomplishments mean a huge amount to me, but it’s scarcely the only thing in my life. There are years lost to pain. When I would stop my medication, I would stop living. I would get manic and then depressed—I wouldn’t wish a day of that on anyone.”

As the youngest child of three, Jamison spent most of her formative years around Andrews Air Force Base in Washington, D.C., where her father, Marshall, was a meteorologist and pilot. “I had a great childhood,” she says. “I couldn’t have been any happier. My father was in love with life and with ideas. My mother was the best mother—if you had to put together a mother, you would say, ‘This was God on a good day.'”

Early on, a young Kay showed a passion for science, receiving her first copy of Gray’s Anatomy at 12 and touring St. Elizabeth’s, the federal psychiatric hospital, when she was 15. (“I found it fascinating and horrifying,” she recalls.) “I knew I wanted a life in science because the questions were always interesting to me.”

By age 17, while a senior in high school, Jamison experienced her first manic-depressive episode. “I wasn’t sleeping very much,” she recalls. “I was full of what I thought were fabulous ideas, which, in fact, were pretty terrible ones and, at the time, as with a lot of people who get manic, I didn’t see it as anything strange—it was pretty much an extension of my natural personality. Life was just too wonderful.”

Until it wasn’t. “At some point, I crashed,” she says. “I could scarcely get out of bed. I had never thought about suicide in my life, and I started thinking about ways to kill myself.”

In the ensuing decade, Jamison managed to convince herself that her violent mood swings were merely an extension of her passionate personality. It wasn’t until Jamison was already an assistant professor of psychiatry at UCLA in 1974, a full decade later, that it became clear to her that she needed help.

“I [had gone] floridly, psychotically manic,” recalls Jamison who, among other things, went on a wild shopping spree at the height of her mania and purchased a stuffed fox from a taxidermist in Virginia. “Buying that fox was absolutely characteristic of being manic. I knew I needed it; I couldn’t wait, and it took on a cosmic significance for me.”

By the time the fox arrived at her office, Jamison had long forgotten about her purchase. “I was sitting in my clinic one day, and there were lots of patients in the waiting room, and one of the secretaries said, ‘Dr. Jamison, there’s a big shipping crate out here,’ and it was this fox, which I had somehow felt the need to fly first class. It was just completely ridiculous,” she says, now able to laugh at the memory.

She began treatment with “a tremendously good psychiatrist,” she says. But even with excellent care, Jamison attempted suicide in 1976 after going off of her lithium, a mood stabilizer often used to control mania. “I think about it all the time,” she says quietly. “I think about the people who haven’t survived.”

Having been to the brink and back, these days, she has made it her mission to advocate and educate, particularly on college campuses across the country.

“The major age of onset for mood disorders is late teens, early 20s,” says Jamison, who also sits on the advisory board of the National Network of Depression Centers, a mental-health network working to transform the field of depressive illness and related mood disorders. “It’s a hard disease, but it’s a common disease. People consistently underestimate how serious these illnesses are. They also don’t understand how treatable they are.”

While Jamison chose to come clean, she advises others to think it through before coming forward. “You don’t know what the consequences are going to be,” she says. “In many instances, people find it has a freeing effect, but you don’t know how people are going to take it. I’ve had incredible support from my colleagues and friends, but there were also people who have said wicked things—there’s a lot of animosity out there. It’s not simple; it’s not straightforward.”

And yet, thanks to her breaking the silence, she is widely credited with helping to lift the stigma often associated with mental illness. “That she has been so accomplished has got to challenge people’s assumptions about bipolar disorder,” says Karen Swartz.

Despite her severe illness, Jamison is undaunted. “I’ve had a great life and would have no cause to complain at all,” says Jamison. “One of the things my mother believed is that you absolutely have to play the hand you’ve been dealt and not sit around wishing your cards were different. In life, you are dealt high cards and low cards, but it’s really about how you put them on the table and use them to help other people.”

In an office adorned with brightly-colored athletic jerseys on every wall, Kevin Crutchfield—director of LifeBridge Health’s Comprehensive Sports Concussion Program—practices neurology as if it’s a stand-up act. During this morning’s concussion clinic, Crutchfield reaches into his doctor’s bag (“my toy bag,” he calls it) to produce a small oregano-filled canister to test a patient’s sense of smell, then guides another patient to walk heel-to-toe toward what he calls his “time-out” corner, and holds yet another young man hostage to ensure that—despite headaches caused by a series of football- and ice-hockey-related collisions—the patient hasn’t lost his ability to laugh at Crutchfield’s never-ending arsenal of corny jokes.

“This is what I call my numbskull treatment,” says the neurologist as he numbs the teenager’s skull before injecting him with an occipital nerve block to alleviate severe headaches. (The patient alternately winces in pain and smiles.)

Laughing matters aside, Crutchfield, who learned the tricks of his trade during a residency at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, approaches his role with missionary zeal as he spreads the gospel of concussions to patients (including Ravens and Orioles players), parents, athletic directors, and anyone else within earshot. His message is loud and clear: Concussions are a medical issue to be reckoned with, and, if not treated correctly (ideally, within 48 hours in Crutchfield’s book), can cause devastating problems, both long- and short-term, to the brain.

Within the past four years or so, concussions, commonly found in high-contact sports, have become a topic of increasing concern and controversy as stories of the injury’s aftermath—early dementia, depression, visual processing, and even death—come to light. Although researchers have studied the issue for decades, about four years ago, “the NFL admitted they had a problem,” says Crutchfield, a former soccer player himself at St. Mary’s College. “They stopped sweeping it under the rug.” Landmark congressional hearings in 2009 led to more stringent rules in the NFL, preventing players from returning to practice or a game if significant signs of a concussion were shown.

These days, the spotlight shines on the playing fields of youth sports—from the lacrosse rec leagues at Brooklandville’s Meadowood Regional Park to the football field at Dulaney High School—amplifying the need to tend to these injuries seriously and urgently at every level. What happened in the NFL, says Andrew Tucker, Ravens’ head team physician and medical director of sports medicine at MedStar Union Memorial Hospital, has “focused our attention even more so on concussions and on the importance of taking very conservative care not only in the football league, but in youth sports where people start their careers.”

Fourteen-year-old Coral Dittmar, who attends George Fox Middle School in Pasadena, was playing club field hockey when an out-of-control ball socked her straight in the temple.

“It completely knocked her off her feet,” recalls Coral’s mom, Ginny. “She had a huge bump that looked like a horn sticking out of the top of her head.”

After being evaluated at a local emergency room, Coral was sent on her way. “We were told it was just a bad contusion,” says Ginny. “They said because she hadn’t lost consciousness or vomited, it wasn’t a concussion.” But a year and a half after the initial accident in October 2010, Coral still suffered from balance and memory issues. After a referral to Crutchfield’s clinic, Ginny learned that her daughter had, in fact, suffered a concussion. “I thought that if it was a concussion, it would have been something they’d pick up that day,” says Ginny. “I never expected she’d still be suffering.”

In part, because there is no standardization of concussion care, Coral is one of many kids who didn’t even know that they had a concussion until much later.

“We are still fighting the mentality of, ‘Oh you dinged yourself,’” says Bill Ashton, sports medicine manager at LifeBridge Health. “We like to say, ‘It’s not just a sprain, it’s your brain.’ Kids need to understand you need your brain for everything. It’s not like treating a pulled muscle or a broken arm.”

Part of the issue, experts say, is that concussions can be tricky to diagnose. “Brain injury is what we call the silent epidemic,” says Bryan Pugh, executive director of the Brain Injury Association of Maryland. “You look typical, but the eggs are scrambled.”

Though there’s still a long way to go, the hope is that Maryland’s new youth concussion law (House Bill 858) signed on May 19, 2011, to protect student athletes from the dangers of concussions, will finally raise long-overdue awareness. (Maryland is the 18th state in the country to introduce such a law.) Now, when a concussion is suspected, the law mandates that a student be removed “from practice or play and returned only after clearance by an appropriately licensed health-care professional.”

And although the law is new, it has already had a dramatic impact on the way in which concussions are handled.

“In the olden days, it was no exercise for a week and then it was okay to go back into the game,” says Paul Bernstorf director of athletics at St. Paul’s School for Boys. “The severity of the injury didn’t matter. Now, it’s a gradual re-entry to play.” (Interestingly, private schools are exempt from the law as it is written, but most schools have their own protocol to protect students.)

While some studies suggest that concussions among student athletes are on the rise, it is hard to say whether sports have become more competitive or whether, with growing awareness, the reporting rates are simply higher. Crutchfield has his own theory. “Athletes are bigger, and they are faster these days, so the force of impact is greater. . . . It’s like running into a train.”

When Crutchfield joined Sinai in 2008, he recognized a need to grow a comprehensive clinic that specifically addressed the multifaceted issues surrounding sports concussions. By fall 2009, he helped expand the mild brain-injury program of Sinai’s Berman Brain & Spine Institute and initiated the development of the Comprehensive Sports Concussion Program, the first integrated interdisciplinary mild brain-injury program on the East Coast.

Eighteen-year-old Kyler Barrett, a recent graduate of Marriotts Ridge High School in Howard County, is among the clinic’s many patient athletes. Barrett was first injured in the fall of 2009, during a high-school football game. “He never came out of the game,” recalls his mother, Robin. “We don’t know when it happened. He said he felt a little ‘off,’ but he thought he was hungry.” Two days later, Kyler was diagnosed with a “mild concussion” at a local hospital. And though the symptoms have ebbed and flowed, nearly three years (and 10 doctors) later, Barrett is still suffering. Under Crutchfield’s care, he will possibly undergo surgery to alleviate his crippling headaches.

“I know people who have had concussions and they talk about headaches,” says Barrett. “But I wish that all I had was the headaches. I’ve had violent mood swings, depressions, sleep issues. Over time you learn to cope with it.”

With cases this severe, some parents are re-evaluating their decision to let their children play contact sports at all.

Betsy Berner’s daughter Naomi, a multisport athlete at Park School, has sustained two concussions (although one was the result of a fluky accident off the field.). Now, Betsy struggles with whether or not to let Naomi play.

“I guess you have to weigh the risk of injury against the very real benefits like leadership, teamwork, increased strength, and agility that are derived from playing team sports,” Betsy says. “I don’t know what the answer is.”

But Michael Dvorkin, an orthopedic surgeon whose son, Garrett, plays football at Gilman, puts his faith in the coaches and educators at that school.

“Gilman School considers its athletes’ health and well-being their first priority,” he says. “As a parent, this eases my mind and I have complete trust in the program.”

Crutchfield says that when a child gets concussed, parents often have one of two extreme reactions: Either they remove the child from the field of play entirely or they rush him back too soon.

“I would hope that every parent is more concerned with their child’s brain as opposed to a sport,” he says, noting that as awareness has increased, parents have become more cautious.

But he feels that if the concussion is treated properly—that is, as an emergency and within the first 48 hours—the risks of permanent brain damage are greatly decreased.

Too much delay in treatment (or the wrong kind of treatment) as was the case with Kyler Barrett, can result in no resolution of symptoms or lead to surgery, says Crutchfield. “If I can [immediately] guide the brain down the proper path of recovery, it’s so much easier than six months or a year later,” he notes.

Thirteen-year-old Grace, the daughter of WBAL-TV anchor Lisa Robinson, was one of the lucky ones. She was referred to Crutchfield’s clinic within 48 hours of a collision during basketball practice at The Bryn Mawr School where she was captain of her middle-school team.

“The other player’s head hit me right on the side of my face,” recalls Grace, who had also suffered a concussion the previous year. “I was hurt so badly, I couldn’t see straight, and my coach had to help me walk to the trainer’s office.”

Although Grace was back at school the next day, Robinson recalls getting a phone call at the station. “They said, ‘You have to come get Grace. She just doesn’t seem herself.’”

In Crutchfield’s office the next day, it became clear that Grace had, in fact, suffered a concussion. “He did the balance test with me, and my balance was awful,” says Grace. “He referred me to do the Wii Fit every day as therapy.”

Within several months, Grace was able to return to sports and feel more like her old self. Though happy to be symptom-free, she was less happy about saying a final farewell to the clinic. “On our last appointment she turned to me and said, ‘You mean I don’t get to go anymore?’” says Robinson, laughing at the memory.

Kid-friendly is exactly what Crutchfield is aiming for as he establishes his clinic as the go-to place for young athletes. “The message to kids when they walk through the doors is that this is their clinic,” he says.

And if it’s up to Grace, who has become something of an expert on the matter, the concussed will keep coming to Crutchfield.

“Every time she sees someone who appears to have a concussion,” says Robinson, “she gives out Dr. Crutchfield’s number.” Adds Grace, “I’ve given the balance test right there on the court.”

NOTE: This is our 2012 Top Dentists feature. Our 2013 Top Dentists list is here.

It’s that time again, when we unveil the results of our annual Top Dentists survey, offering a handy resource to readers who want to do you-know-what: find a talented dentist they actually like. And, no, we didn’t throw dental picks at a dartboard to arrive at our list: We surveyed more than 2,000 dentists in Baltimore and the five surrounding counties over the course of several months to find out where they would send a member of their own family. Since most dentistry is local, we then divided the winners by location.* What else do you want to know about your D.D.S.? Well, when we did our survey of top physicians in November, we explored the hobbies and charitable causes that the M.D.s pursued in their spare time. The dentists, of course, were left wondering, “Hey, what are we, chopped liver?” So we did something similar for them, discovering off-hours callings that range from the noble to the nutty.

On December 2, 2009, and after 21 years as anchor at WMAR-TV, Mary Beth Marsden signed off for one final time at the end of the 6 p.m. newscast.

It was a bittersweet moment for the Emmy Award-winning broadcaster, who, after months of stressful negotiations, had taken a buyout from the ABC affiliate.

While her three children (Jack, now 14, George, now 12, and Tess, now 10) and her husband, Mark McGrath, watched from the wings, she intoned, “Twenty-one years. Fifteen hairstyles—one for every news director,” during a three-minute montage that began with her first story at the station on changes at the Towson Library and ended with her final farewell.

Nearly two years to that day, Marsden sits on a brown velvet sofa in the living room of her storybook Cape Cod-style home in Ruxton and reflects on the end of an era.

“It was a great run,” she says, “but I think you can be someplace too long, and you need to have a change for yourself. I didn’t seek it—it just came down the pike, but it was the right time for me. After the newscast, we all went out to dinner, and I was free as a bird.”

But she was hardly retired. With her newfound freedom, Marsden developed a renewed passion for painting, exhibiting her work at art shows held at L’Hirondelle and Elkridge Country Clubs and even winning an award for her flower paintings at the Maryland State Fair. And in September of 2011, she was hired by WBAL radio to host the Maryland’s News Now With Mary Beth Marsden.

But one mission has been particularly near and dear to Marsden’s heart: In 2002, her daughter, Tess, was diagnosed with PDD-NOS (pervasive developmental delay, not otherwise specified)—a type of autism-spectrum disorder.

“I really didn’t fully accept the name of the diagnosis for years,” says Marsden.

Now, with her time away from the daily grind—and the unyielding spotlight of TV—Marsden was finally determined to do something proactive for her daughter and other kids like her.

When Tess was first diagnosed, Marsden knew very little about autism.

“We knew something was off,” she explains. “At two, she didn’t have two-word sentences, and she would sometimes act out, but autism was way off my chart.”

Marsden and McGrath took Tess for testing at Kennedy Krieger Institute. She remembers observing Tess’s session through a window with Rebecca Landa, the director for the Center of Autism and Related Disorders.

“She said, ‘I believe that Tess is unequivocally on the autism spectrum,'” Marsden says. “And then she went, ‘Blah, blah, blah,’ because I didn’t hear anything else she said. I was reeling. It was one of those moments where the whole world spins off its axis.”

Once she accepted the diagnosis—and she admits it took a long time—she set out to become something of an autism expert. Using the same kind of doggedness that made her a successful journalist, she voraciously read about the condition and consulted with educators, other parents, and experts in the field.

About a year and a half into Marsden’s “retirement,” she came up with an idea for a possible television show. “I knew I wanted to do something with autism,” she says. “My idea was doing a reality show called On the Spec, as in spectrum. I wove in aspects of [Dr. Seuss’s] Horton Hears a Who—it was all the people on the spec in Horton who were all screaming to be heard—so it was a play on that. I had envisioned a whole SuperNanny type of thing for autism. We would take a situation such as a parent trying to potty train his autistic 8-year-old, and try to solve it.”

While the powers that be at a national cable network showed some interest, ultimately autism was deemed a downer as far as programming was concerned.

“It got as far as a producers meeting [at the network], but they said it was ‘too depressing,'” says Marsden. “They love hoarders,” she cracks, demonstrating her trademark humor. “I was like, ‘What if I find an autistic hoarder?'”

And she bristles at the idea that her pitch was depressing.

“‘Really?'” she recalls saying. “‘Yes, there are moments that are depressing, but, by and large, the people I know in this world are the funniest, most creative, empathetic, warm, and loving people; I find it uplifting. If you are seeing it as depressing, the world is seeing it as depressing, and we need to break out of that.'”

So Marsden decided to take matters into her own hands, forging ahead and using her own funds (to date, approximately $15,000) to produce a library of video vignettes for her website, Real Look Autism, (reallookautism.com), a resource for anyone touched by or interested in autism.

Her goal? To focus on concrete strategies and pragmatic solutions—from dealing with messy table manners to awkward social skills and compulsive behaviors—that have worked with children who have autism spectrum disorders.

“Research is great,” says Marsden. “But we need to help people who are in it now.”

Though Marsden had misgivings about the idea of putting Tess—now a fourth grader in a special-education program at The Chatsworth School in Reisterstown—and her anxiety about school in the spotlight, she ultimately felt it was an important thing to do.

“I realized that if I was going to ask other people to tell their stories, I would have to tell mine, too,” she says.

In Tess’s video, she is shown with helpful teachers who offer strategies—reinforcing positive behavior and giving Tess “preferred breaks” like video-game time—that help her deal with her anxiety about school.

“People have told me they have shown the video of Tess as part of an IEP [individualized education plan] meeting at school. I’m like, ‘Wow. We helped someone.’ That makes me feel so good,” Marsden says.

All of the videos on the Real Look Autism site (eight to date), feature Baltimore-area families and are filmed and edited by Marsden’s former WMAR co-worker, videographer John Anglim.

“I thought it was a fantastic idea,” says Anglim, “and it was filling such a need that no one else was. It fit like a key in a lock. And from personal experience, there are members of my family on the spectrum, so it hit home.”

The videos have been a huge hit not only in America, but also in Australia and the UK.

“She throws herself at it,” marvels Marsden’s husband, Mark McGrath, a financial adviser for Stifel Nicolaus. “I thought this might be just a ‘Mary Beth project.’ I had no idea it would reach a global audience.”

Almost obsessively, Marsden tracks how many people have viewed her videos both on the Real Look Autism website and on YouTube.

“Fifty-thousand,” she says, scanning her website on the laptop in her kitchen. “That’s not enough. I want to get to one million. I could talk about autism forever,” she adds with emphasis. “You either find your thing, or it finds you. And this is my thing.”

As a child, Marsden, the oldest of three, was never afraid to go after what she wanted. And what she wanted in her teen years was to leave the family fold and get out and explore the world on her own.

“I was bossy and driven and independent,” says the Washington, D.C., native. “I couldn’t wait to get out of the house to work in Ocean City in the summers at the Longhorn Steakhouse. I wore a tight polyester uniform and spent the tips as fast as we made them.”

In 1979, Marsden headed off to Towson University to major in fine art. In drama class one day, the assignment was to perform one’s own obituary. Marsden performed hers as a newscaster.

“My friends told me I was a natural, so I think I had the bug at that point,” recalls Marsden.

By 1981, Marsden, then an education major, transferred to University of Maryland, College Park, to pursue journalism. Once there, she landed an internship at D.C.’s WJLA, writing news copy for anchor Rene Poussaint. (“If she stumbled on a word during a broadcast, you figured you’d written something wrong,” she laughs, “but she was really encouraging—in a standoffish way.”)

At that point, Marsden felt she had found her calling. “I knew that’s what I wanted to do. Period.”

Her rise was fairly rapid, though there were some dues to pay. After graduating in 1983 with a B.A. in radio, television, and film, Marsden joined the news team at WHSV-TV in Harrisonburg, VA.

“In the TV world, you have maybe 220 markets,” she says. “This was about 187.”

Within eight months, Marsden made the leap to a much larger market in Scranton, PA, at WNEP-TV.

“I shot and edited my own video while driving around in my Ford Bronco,” Marsden recalls. “I anchored and produced the show and ran my own prompter.”

It was during this initiation by fire in Scranton, while covering everything from township meetings to strip mining, that Marsden really hit her stride.

By 1988, Marsden’s former WNEP news director, Paul Steuber, hired her for a second time to work with him at his new station, WMAR-TV in Baltimore.

“I loved it,” says Marsden, “because I am a questioner, and I am curious. It also satisfied a creative side of me—you are putting together a story with video and audio and you are piecing it together in an entertaining fashion.”

And obviously Marsden and WMAR were a good match. She stayed at the job for more than 20 years.

On a sunny winter afternoon, Marsden sits at her desk on the third floor of WBAL-AM and gets ready to host Maryland’s News Now With Mary Beth Marsden.

Dressed casually in a Relentless 7 concert T-shirt and a pair of corduroy jeans, she’s got an hour or so to prepare before she goes on the air at 2 p.m. Of course, she’s already put in a full-day’s work on the domestic front: waking up at 6:30 a.m., riding the exercise bike for 30 minutes, getting three kids ready for school, driving Tess half-way across town to Chatsworth in Reisterstown, speaking at length with her children’s pediatrician, and checking comments from fans of the Real Look Autism Facebook page.

When Marsden was offered the job of weekday afternoon drive-time host, she was initially hesitant. “I had two days where I was in a deep depression,” she says. “But once I did two shows, I was like, ‘Okay, I can do this.'”

Her WBAL colleagues had no such reservations.

“She is a great addition to our team,” says sportscaster Brett Hollander. “She has always been incredibly well respected as a broadcaster and a journalist. Good broadcasters, I have always felt, can be chameleons in this field and can adapt to anything and move from TV to radio. Mary Beth has been able to do that with total ease.”

As she reads the show’s rundown, edits copy, talks to producer Jared Ruderman, and takes occasional sips of water out of Tess’s SpongeBob Squarepants water bottle, the pixie-sized powerhouse is the picture of cool and collected.

As for her laid-back duds? She went casual from day one. “I didn’t want to set the bar too high,” she cracks.

During the show, Marsden is a total pro, juggling everything from breaking news to live interviews, and incorporating up-to-the-minute information into her script with mere minutes to broadcast. On today’s docket, an interview with WBAL-TV reporter Jayne Miller about former Governor Robert Ehrlich campaign manager Paul E. Schurick’s “Robo-calls” trial.

“Listen to this,” she says to no one in particular in the studio as she scans an article from
The Baltimore Sun about the charges of election fraud meant to suppress the African-American voter turnout during the 2010 Gubernatorial election. [“Schurick’s attorney Dwight Pettit] called the whole thing a ‘faux pas.'”

She scribbles a few notes, and minutes later, she goes live with Miller. “Do you want to talk about what the defense said first?'” she asks Miller. “I love that Dwight Pettit called it a ‘faux pas.'”

So far, Marsden says she’s loving the gig. She really appreciates the fact that “WBAL has a lot of connections,” she says. “So you get to talk to Raven’s coach John Harbaugh or a Supreme Court Justice or Cal Ripken comes in. I almost have this little kid excitement about it. I get jazzed. I am never bored, and I don’t have to put my energies into making sure I covered a zit up!”

That being said, Marsden does have some designs on getting back on TV—just not how you might think.

“My parents had a big antenna put on the roof of their house in Montgomery County so they could get Baltimore stations, and now that I’m not on TV, my mother will say, ‘Do you think [WBAL-TV] will call you to ask you to fill in?'” she chuckles.

But Marsden has other ideas for sister station WBAL-TV.

“I want to mainstream the Real Look Autism videos,” she says with a glimmer in her eye, “and I am going to be pushing WBAL-TV in April during Autism Awareness Month to be running them. I have no hesitation about [a conflict of interest]. I’m like, ‘Screw it.’ If you have a venue, who is going to fault you? Journalism feeds my mind and keeps me sharp, but this feeds my soul.”

It’s late on a crisp fall afternoon at the Glenwood Life Counseling Center in Govans. This is typically the quietest time of day, but there is still a small crowd chatting by the front door. One by one, individual clients duck inside, check in with the front desk, and go to one of three booths in the medication room where they receive a dose of Methadone, the synthetic opioid used to treat recovering heroin addicts.

There is a tall, dreadlocked construction worker wearing a bright orange vest, a hard hat tucked under his arm. An elderly woman with oxygen tubes strapped to her nose greets everyone with a broad smile. When a stocky man wearing a hooded sweatshirt approaches the booth, he is instructed to breath into a Breathylizer machine nearby, to make sure he hasn’t been drinking.

Nearby, there is a child-care room where clients leave their kids while meeting with case workers or attending group counseling sessions. There are the rooms, overcrowded with chairs, where the groups meet, and, nearby, a line of offices where case workers conduct the painstaking work of helping addicts put their lives back together.

“People often come here when they’ve lost everything,” says Lillian Donnard, who has worked at Glenwood for 13 years, and been director for five years. “For many of them, for five, 10, 20, 40 years, they’ve been getting sick and chasing drugs every day of their life, every four hours—it’s a full-time job.”

When clients first arrive, often referred by family or other addicts, they receive a medical exam and counseling to help them stabilize their typically out-of-control lives.

“Once they get stable, we start to work on the 50 other things that have become part and parcel of this drug addiction,” says Donnard. “They have no health insurance, no housing, no employment, they didn’t finish school, they have legal issues—it’s all about trying to build this recovery package that is about turning their life around.”

The medication room—where most clients come daily for their dose of Methadone—is the first stop for those entering Glenwood, but it is almost never the last. Most clients stop to talk to their case workers about employment, housing, or personal issues. Many attend support groups and workshops on everything from reading and writing to meditation. Some go to a book-club meeting. Others just sit in the lobby and knit, eat lunch, and chat.

“A lot of people come and stay and don’t really have any place else to go,” Donnard explains. “They live in a shooting gallery.”

Glenwood Life, which marked its 40th anniversary this year, is the second oldest Methadone treatment center in Baltimore. When the center opened in 1971, it had less than 200 clients. Today, it has 560. About half of the clients have been coming here for at least four years and some have been coming a lot longer than that. Because of its age, Glenwood is confronting a new problem for Methadone clinics, which first started cropping up about 45 years ago: treating elderly addicts.

“The thing that’s different now, in 2011, is that some of these people who have been here a long time are getting physically old,” says Donnard. “We have this whole overlay of normal problems of the aged—but also things that have been exacerbated by all those years of drugging and running—that nobody told us about or prepared us for, or that we have the resources to deal with. Our psychiatrist jokes that we look like the VA, with all the amputees that we have from diabetes and gout.”

And while the aging population presents new problems for Glenwood administrators and case workers, it also allows them to become more deeply connected with clients and to see the long-term results of their work.

“You go through this life with them,” says Donnard. “You hear about their children graduating and having their grandchildren.”

When Glenwood Life Counseling Center opened in 1971, it was the second full-service Methadone clinic in Baltimore and lots of people had reservations about it—particularly the center’s new neighbors.

“Forty years ago, everybody was flying by the seat of their pants—people didn’t know a lot about addiction, didn’t know a lot about treatment,” says Frank Satterfield, who started working as a vocational counselor at Glenwood soon after it opened, served as director for many years, and is now the center’s finance officer. “I had to go to 1,000 community meetings trying to explain what Methadone treatment was.”

Early on, the local city councilperson threatened to shut the center down because of the loitering associated with it. But, over time, administrators won over the community. It didn’t hurt that the center’s administrators built a playground across the street that is used by the community, or that they allowed local groups to use the building for meetings. But the most important factor in the détente was the community’s gradual realization that Glenwood’s clients weren’t causing problems. This, more than any community meeting, taught them what Methadone does.

Methadone was first manufactured in Germany in 1937 and introduced in the U.S. a decade later as a pain killer. In a landmark 1965 study, researchers discovered that the drug, which does not offer the same euphoric effect of heroin, could help heroin addicts wean themselves off the drug without debilitating withdrawal symptoms.

“Three things happen when you start using Methadone,” explains Donnard. “One, people don’t get sick anymore. Two, they don’t feel the effects of street narcotics. And three, they stop craving the drugs.” She stresses that the absence of withdrawal symptoms—during which, she says, “every cell in your body hurts”—is the primary selling point among addicts.

It was the beginning of a major shift from thinking of addicts as weak, flawed individuals to the understanding that addiction is a disease that can be treated medically. But changing the way people think about addicts is a slow process.

“The researchers found this treatment worked, but there was still this moral outrage in the early ’60s about giving a medication to people who are already abusing heroin,” says Donnard.

And still, there are people who doubt Methadone’s effectiveness.

“I sat next to a judge the other day and he asked, ‘Does Methadone really work?’ recalls Donnard. “I said, ‘Well, 100 percent of our clients come in addicted [to heroin], and after a few months, only 20 percent are. So, yeah, I would say it works.’”

In Glenwood’s early days, the heroin problem in Baltimore was relatively small and, in a lot of ways, addicts had an easier time maintaining their lifestyle than they do now.

“Dope was fairly plentiful, and there wasn’t the kind of enforcement there is now—people weren’t getting hassled a lot,” says Satterfield, who worked in the prison system before coming to Glenwood. “Jobs were plentiful—a lot of our folks worked at Sparrows Point or Lever Brothers, or building the highway. They had income, they had health insurance, they had good jobs. And it was easy to find jobs for people once they got into recovery. There was no AIDS, there was no Hepatitis C.”

Over the years, particularly during the 1980s, when AIDS and crack ravaged America’s inner cities, addiction rates soared. The number of people taking Methadone multiplied—it is now the predominant treatment for heroin addicts.

“Methadone is highly reinforcing,” says Donnard. “Once they’re here, people get stable to do the work in their life that they’ve messed up. A pharmacologist likens trying to live your life while addicted to going to class, but it’s right before lunch and you can’t concentrate on anything. Methadone gives you lunch.”

Rodney Jackson first came to Glenwood to treat his heroin addiction in 1995. He stayed with the program for two years, but then fell back into his old habits. In 2000, once he hit rock bottom, he returned.

“I was homeless,” he says. “I walked in without anything but the clothes on my back.”

It was a long way down for Jackson, now 52. For years, he worked as a special- education teacher in city schools and had even worked for a time as an adviser to the Baltimore City Police Department. For 20 years, he managed to conceal his addiction before things unraveled. Jackson, whose father was a drug addict, credits Glenwood’s onetime resident physician Dr. Robert McDaniel—a recovering addict himself who died in 2002—with getting him on the path to recovery.

“He treated me like a human being,” says Jackson. “At the time I came back to Glenwood, it had been a while since someone treated me that way.”

Jackson is one of six long-term clients who have become part-time peer-case managers. While Glenwood’s 14 full-time case managers oversee clients’ cases, they will often refer clients to peer managers to help them navigate the tricky waters of getting housing, employment, and other social services.

“We show them how to get a driver’s license, how to apply for Section 8 housing, how to get food stamps, insurance, things like that,” says Jackson. Like most clients, Jackson still takes Methadone every day. Case workers are very slow to wean clients off the drug, for fear of a relapse. They usually only begin that process after clients have been stable for many years. Few clients ever wean themselves off the drug entirely.

Jackson and the other peer managers work out of a house adjacent to the center and all share a passion for their work.

“We’re only supposed to work four hours at a time, but most of the time, we’ll stay all day,” says Jackson. “We know what it’s like.”

Donnard says one of the biggest rewards of staying at Glenwood for so many years is watching the transformation of peoples’ lives.

“We tend to serve people who have long histories of drug use and who are very disenfranchised,” she says. “And then, one day, you’ll see them at our book club, or celebrating their child’s birthday.”

After 40 years, Glenwood has the history and reputation of an institution, but it still manages to provide surprises almost every day. As Donnard says, “We walk this long life journey with so many of our people.”

Update: This article has been updated to contain a sponsored link from drugabuse.com.

In 2004, Kuwaiti businessman Adel Alzankawi received word that his wife had a malignant tumor. Concerned that local doctors would not be able to remove the growth and save her life, he went to the Internet.

“I typed in ‘best hospital in the world,'” he recalls. “It came back ‘Johns Hopkins.'”

Months later, Alzankawi and his wife traveled to Baltimore to have her tumor removed. Six years later, she returns every year to monitor her condition.

“Everything is fine now,” says Alzankawi. “She had another operation last year—at Hopkins, of course.”

Mrs. Alzankawi is one of 3,000 people who will come from abroad to be treated at The Johns Hopkins Hospital this year, with 36,000 scheduled appointments and 1,100 inpatient admissions, making Baltimore probably the most popular global destination for health care. Patients come from South America, Asia, and Europe, but the largest number come from the Middle East, and often include members of royal families, high-ranking government officials, and heads of state.

The Herculean task of catering to this demanding and specialized clientele falls to Johns Hopkins Medicine International (JHI), a 150-person department including interpreters who speak more than 20 languages. JHI specializes in the delicate task of communicating with people from a wide range of backgrounds, cultural traditions, and religions, who are often in the most precarious of life-and-death situations.

“The people who come here from abroad are mostly very, very sick,” says Raffaella Molteni, the chief administrative officer at JHI. “They come here because this is one of the last options, if not the last or only option for their care. People who come here are desperate for their medical condition to improve and we need to handle the complexity of their family situation, their cultural situation.”

International patients coming to Hopkins most often come for medical or surgical treatment of advanced cancer, neurosurgery, or orthapedics. The group frequently includes children suffering from genetic defects, cancer, or birth abnormalities. These kinds of patients, who often arrive with families, have been coming to Hopkins for decades, as part of the “International Services” department, but, in 1999, the hospital created JHI, increasing staff and aiming to create a concierge level of service for them.

“We designated staff members to be ambassadors for the patients coming here, to go and help them, when arriving here at the airport, really making a point of being here for them at any point of their journey, even when they were not at the hospital,” says Molteni, who has been part of JHI since its inception. “We had a 24/7 phone number people could call when they had questions, we had people visiting the patients at their hotels and homes just to make sure they felt comfortable.”

These ambassadors, now called international care coordinators, usually speak the same language as the clients they serve and are generally from the same part of the world. They quickly become not just interpreters, but advocates, helping patients navigate the complicated world of medical diagnosis and treatment through the lens of their unique cultural and religious background.

“For example, there are times where you cannot use the word ‘cancer’ right away,” says Molteni, citing the cultural importance of discretion, particularly in patients from the Middle East. “At one point, the patient has to know, to make appropriate decisions regarding the care, but when is the time to let the patient know? You need to be a cultural broker betweens the physicians and medical staff and the family.”

These cultural brokers are crucial, says Dr. Charles Cummings, executive medical director of JHI, who regularly sees patients from abroad. “Patient coordinators are very much a part of the treatment process here, along with doctors and nurses,” he says. “Very frequently, those coordinators are present with a patient when the physician is in the process of treatment or evaluation.”

Since the creation of JHI, the number of international patients coming to Hopkins has tripled, based largely on word of mouth—the hospital does little marketing overseas.

“There is this unique relationship that gets established,” says Molteni. “Everybody is the same when they get sick. We all go through the same experiences, the same anxiety, the same fears.”

Passersby are frequently perplexed by the comings and goings on the corner of Aliceanna and S. Essex Streets in swanky Harbor East. There, large red vans, some handicap-accessible, often drop off or pick up large numbers of passengers in Middle Eastern garb. The women often have head-to-toe hijabs, the men wear long, flowing white robes and head coverings. Frequently, at least one member of the party will be wheelchair-bound, walking with crutches, or attached to an I.V.

These men and women are guests of Chase Street Properties, located in The Promenade building at 1001 Aliceanna Street. Argentinian expatriate Gonzalo Jouan founded the company in 1997 after working in the International Services department at Hopkins for 10 years. He is now JHI’s biggest contractor for housing international patients. His company owns or leases 82 apartments in the Baltimore area, including 38 in The Promenade, and Jouan says he is generally at about 97 percent capacity.

Often, Jouan and his staff are on the front lines, shuttling Hopkins’ international clientele to and from the hospital and the airport, taking them on shopping trips, tracking down markets with halal meat, and generally making their stay in Baltimore as pleasant as possible. He knows what it’s like to be a foreigner in this town.

“When I first came, I was kind of a novelty in Baltimore,” says Jouan, an ex-rugby player who first moved to town in 1987. While he was working at Hopkins, Jouan noticed that hotels and long-term housing companies didn’t know how to handle patients coming to the hospital from abroad.

“Corporate housing companies didn’t know anything about these people,” says Jouan, sitting in Chase Street Properties’ cramped office, which includes an unclaimed stack of luggage from Abu Dhabi, and a poster with camels riding into a desert sunrise that reads, “Colors of Libya.” “When they come to Baltimore, it’s because they’re really sick. They need help.”

He started his business by buying four apartments at the Belvedere Hotel in Mt. Vernon for $27,000, but quickly realized that the location wasn’t right.

“People from the Middle East, in particular, are very concerned about safety,” he says. “They need secure buildings, buildings with 24-hour front desk, everything within walking distance.”

Next, Jouan bought several units in Federal Hill’s Harbor View building, but soon found a hub in the rapidly developing Harbor East area. In addition to snapping up apartments in The Promenade, he bought dozens at Spinnaker Bay around the corner. He says his clients love all the dining and shopping options in the area, in addition to the proximity to the Inner Harbor.

Jouan gradually expanded his services as he realized his clients’ needs. He bought vans to shuttle them from the apartments to the hospital at no additional fee, and when he realized that they were paying $70 to get a wheelchair-accessible ride, he bought wheelchair-accessible vans. His drivers take clients to and from BWI at no cost and help them find whatever they need in town, whether it’s a Hindu temple or a rare ingredient to make stew. During the historic local snowstorms earlier this year, Jouan was in his Hummer around the clock, shuttling patients—including several who were not his clients—to hospitals, pharmacies, and markets.

“My mom was a cancer patient at Hopkins,” says Jouan, known to most of his clients as Gonzo. “I know what these people are going through.”

Some of Jouan’s clients have become friends over the years. Amer Al-Fulasi, for example, has been one of Chase Street’s most frequent clients. He first brought his son from Qatar to Hopkins in 2006 after the boy was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease. They return once a year for treatment, usually staying in the same two-bedroom apartment at The Promenade.

“Gonzo is always great,” says Al-Fulasi, who has become something of a leader among the Middle Eastern families traveling to Hopkins. “It has been a great comfort, staying here.”

His apartment is simple, with wall-to-wall carpeting and plain white walls. One unique feature is the massive satellite dish on the balcony, capable of picking up stations throughout the Middle East—also a great comfort, says Al-Fulasi. On a visit during the month-long holiday Ramadan, when Muslims fast during daylight hours, packages of food are lined up for Al-Fulasi and his son to eat after sundown.

For the past two years, Jouan has set aside an apartment at The Promenade during Ramadan, where his clients from the Middle East can gather, pray, and break their daily fast. “You meet people from Kuwait, UAE, Saudi Arabia,” says Al-Fulasi, who helps to pull together patients and families from different Middle Eastern countries for the gatherings, which are a welcome respite from what are often grim circumstances for visiting families.

In the lobby of The Promenade, Hend Ebrahim waits with her two sons for a shuttle to take them to appointments at Hopkins. One son, wearing a mask, suffers with cancer and recently had a tumor removed from his face. The other has epilepsy. Raffaella Molteni says Hopkins gets a disproportionate number of children with genetic-related diseases from the Middle East, because of the incidence of marriages within families.

Ebrahim first brought her sons to Hopkins from Kuwait on the recommendation of their Kuwaiti doctor in 2004. They’ve been back every year for the past three years. Through a smile and broken English, Ebrahim says she values the knowledgeable Arabic translators at Hopkins, as well as the mosque at the hospital, where she frequently prays. Also, she was surprised and delighted to meet so many Kuwaitis at the Ramadan gatherings at The Promenade. Like Al-Fulasi, she says her favorite restaurant in town is The Helmand in Mt. Vernon, which specializes in Afghan cuisine.

Her children, in giggling but more refined English, say they have particularly loved the Aquarium and a day trip to Six Flags, outside of D.C. The children help Ebrahim express how much she likes Harbor East, noting that two new buildings have gone up in the area since they first came three years ago.

Molteni says the development of Harbor East, a safe area with condos, high-end restaurants, and shopping downtown, has been very popular with international patients.

“They have seen a great improvement with Harbor East,” says Molteni. “They still would like to see a high-level department store, like Saks or Nordstrom, downtown.”

Although certainly many come from great wealth and even royalty, the staff at JHI is quick to point out that not all of the patients they work with are well-off. Some governments in the Persian Gulf, in particular, have a policy of paying for medical care overseas if treatments are not available at home. But it’s fair to say that most clients can easily pay for their health care out of pocket.

And catering to wealthy patients is good for Hopkins. Besides paying the cost of the services rendered, international patients make over 100 contributions to its research funds every year, some very substantial. It’s also good for Baltimore, which benefits from the influx of healtcare tourists with disposable income.

Elizabeth Titterton, who has come to Hopkins from Bermuda for a hip replacement, says her country is devoted to Hopkins. “Bermudians like the best-quality health care,” she says. “And Hopkins is definitely considered the best.”

In fact, surprisingly, Bermuda is one of the most common countries of origin for international patients at Hopkins. It fits the bill for the kind of country that sends a lot of patients to the hospital: Bermuda, like countries in the Middle East, and certain parts of Asia and Central and South America, has a population with significant wealth and a health care system without high-end services. Although Hopkins does frequently see patients from Europe, they are far fewer and generally for more specialized services.

In particular, patients from the royal families of the Middle East have kept the Hopkins staff on its toes. These patients are often treated at the Marburg Pavilion, an area of the hospital often set aside for wealthy patients, with rooms that look more like hotel suites and dining provided by the Marriott.

This year, one female member of a royal family came to Hopkins for treatment with an entourage of 70 people, including a chef, teachers for the children, their own private physician, and several assistants and servers. In addition to the primary patient, several members of her entourage asked to be treated, ultimately filling 11 of the Marburg Pavilion’s 15 private rooms.

JHI has a unique staff set up to accommodate the needs of VIP clients, including security, amenities, transportation—really anything they need—but, sometimes, there are problems.

“The last time we had member of the royal family, in the middle of the night, one of the sheiks wanted to have scrambled eggs made by one of her staff,” Molteni recalls. “The issue is that you cannot say, ‘No.'”

To sidestep rules about non-Hopkins staff using Hopkins facilities—particularly when they’re closed—Molteni called the director of food services and had a staff member open the kitchen and supervise the sheik’s personal chef preparation of the eggs.

“There is a story almost every week,” Molteni says with a weary laugh. She recalls the time a patient insisted on having kiwis, which the kitchen did not offer. She sent an employee to buy two cases of the fruits. Another time, a patient didn’t like her mattress and refused to sleep on it. Employees were dispatched to buy a new one.

But there are limits to the hospital’s flexibility, particularly with Hopkins personnel. Molteni says her staff tries to accommodate patient requests with regard to gender and race, assigning a patient coordinator of the same sex and background as the patient, if asked. Sometimes, patients will request not to work with certain staff members because of a perceived slight. “It could just be that the staff member sat down at a time when the patient thought they should stand up,” she says. “So they say, ‘I don’t want to see that person anymore.'”

But with medical staff, there is limited accommodation. “It becomes a matter of managing expectations,” she says. “They come for the best possible medical care, and that’s what they get.”

The fifth floor of the 550 building at Hopkins, where many of JHI’s international care coordinators work, looks a bit like the U.N. Desks are grouped by region. In one area, where coordinators who work with Asians sit, Asian-themed artwork—mostly gifts from appreciative patients—covers the walls. In another, staff who work with clients from Central and South America huddle below walls papered with flags from that part of the world.

One of the least-known facts about Johns Hopkins Medicine International—and yet one of its most beneficial to the community—is that, because of the staff’s language skills, it also caters to non-English-speaking Baltimore residents, mostly recent immigrants. For Spanish-speaking staff, local residents, many from nearby Upper Fells point, make up most of the clientele.

“The majority are Spanish-speaking, but we have Russian-speaking, a few Korean, Chinese, Farsi,” says Molteni.

And coordinators often connect their international patients with people in local immigrant communities during their stay.

“Especially for the patients here for a long time, it’s great to integrate with existing communities,” says Molteni, noting that patients from Greece have loved finding countrymen in Baltimore’s Greektown, and those from Korea are shocked to discover a vibrant Korean community in Howard County.

But even when there is a limited local community, having a patient coordinator from a patient’s own background can make a big impact. “The interaction with our staff people makes a huge difference in the patient experience,” says Molteni. “You interact with someone who understands your culture, maybe he is from the same town you came from, and that makes the patient feel at ease.”

And Molteni, who oversees the hiring of JHI staff, says that beyond language skills and intelligence, she looks for people with a deep sense of compassion.

“Our people are amazing,” she says. “When there is a patient in the hospital, I know that they come during the weekend, they bring homemade food, they bring additional friends to visit the patient—it’s the little human touch that is our main marketing tool.”

For Elizabeth Titterton, whose fractured hip was misdiagnosed by a Bermudian doctor before she came to Hopkins, having patient coordinator Ashley Jones to guide her through a new city—especially considering that Titterton was in pain and on crutches—made everything a little easier to manage.

“I would have been completely lost and miserable,” says Titterton, who has remained in Baltimore for specialized physical therapy since her hip replacement. “Ashley has been there, holding my hand every step of the way.”

transforming.

“They never stopped trying new things, they never gave up,” she says. “My parents put a lot of trust in them, and it was definitely not easy for my parents; it was all an incredible shock for them. It changed my perspective. It changed me.”

She’s held several research jobs while in school, but when making her career choice, she knew she wanted closer interaction with hospital patients.

“I know I’ll make a great nurse practitioner,” she says. “I know how it feels to be in that position. I know that feeling and the difference people make.”

This year, as we prepared our annual survey of the region’s best doctors, more Americans have been thinking about health care than at any time in recent history. The debate over health-care reform has caused many of us to reflect on our physical and mental well-being, our national values, and the way medicine is practiced and paid for in America. We decided to tackle the issue head-on, inviting important local players in the health-care reform debate—including Sen. Ben Cardin and the CEOs of several hospitals and health systems in the region, along with doctors, nurses, and public policy experts—to discuss the issue in our offices. The result is a wide-ranging roundtable that goes far beyond the talking points you’re likely to hear on the evening news. There are also features on Dr. Anthony Gaspari, the University of Maryland dermatologist who treated the Indonesian “Tree-Man,” and the Penn North Neighborhood Center, which has had tremendous success using acupuncture to treat addicts referred from the city’s drug courts. Those stories, plus interviews with several “Top Docs,” give the survey appropriate context in a year when managing health is on everyone’s mind.

Following are our 2009 Top Doctors as selected by their peers. The physician’s age follows each name if he or she provided it.

ADDICTION

Marc J. Fishman, 49, Mountain Manor Treatment Center, 3800 Frederick Ave., 410-233-1400.

Jack L. Wapner, 59, 11100 Liberty Rd., Wards Chapel Village, Ste. F, Randallstown, 410-655-2740.

ALLERGY AND IMMUNOLOGY

John R. Bacon, 60, 120 Sister Pierre Dr., Ste. 201, Towson, 410-321-0284.

David Golden, 56, 7939 Honeygo Blvd. No. 219, White Marsh. 410-931-0404.

Jonathan Matz, 47, 7939 Honeygo Blvd. No. 219, White Marsh. 410-931-0404.

ALTERNATIVE/COMPLEMENTARY

Brian M. Berman, 58, University of Maryland Center for Integrative Medicine, Kernan Hospital, 2200 Kernan Dr., 410-448-6361.

Mark A. Young, 49, 4000 Old Court Rd., Ste. 105, 410-602-6272; 5430 Campbell Blvd. Ste. 205, White Marsh. 410-933-8800.

ANESTHESIOLOGY, ADULT

Richard Shapiro, 55, Parkway Anesthesiologists, 201 E. University Pkwy., 410-554-6559.

John A. Ulatowski, 55, Johns Hopkins, 600 N. Wolfe St., Blalock 1415, 410-955-8408.

Kelvin M. Yee, 44, Sinai Hospital, 2401 W. Belvedere Ave., 410-601-5209.

ANESTHESIOLOGY, PEDIATRIC

Anne Savarese, 52, University of Maryland Medical Center, 22 S. Greene St., S11C00, 410-328-6033.

Aaron Zuckerberg, 51, Sinai Hospital, 2401 W. Belvedere Ave., B-4, 410-601-9193.

CARDIOLOGY, ADULT

Ernest Arnett, 63, Johns Hopkins Hospital, 600 N. Wolfe St., 410-955-7670.

R. Michael Benitez, 48, University of Maryland, 22 S. Greene St., 800-492-5538.

Benjamin V. DuBois, 56, MidAtlantic Cardiovascular Associates, 1838 Greene Tree Rd., Ste. 535, Pikesville, 410-653-3923.

Stacy Fisher, 39, MidAtlantic Cardiovascular Associates, 1838 Greene Tree Rd., Ste. 535, Pikesville, 410-653-3923.

Warren Israel, 62, MidAtlantic Cardiovascular Associates, 1838 Greene Tree Rd., Ste. 535, Pikesville, 410-653-3923.

Stephen J. Mason, 63, MidAtlantic Cardiovascular Associates, 9105 Franklin Square Dr., Ste. 209, Rosedale, 410-484-9520.

Stephen Plantholt, 58, MidAtlantic Cardiovascular Associates, 3449 Wilkens Ave., Ste. 300, 410-644-5111.

James Porterfield, age n/a, MidAtlantic Cardiovascular Associates, 6569 N. Charles St., Ste. 600, Towson, 410-825-5150.

Jonathon Safren, 56, MidAtlantic Cardiovascular Associates, 3449 Wilkens Ave., Ste. 300, 410-644-5111.

CARDIOLOGY/WOMEN

Shellee Nolan, age n/a, 7501 Osler Dr., 3rd Floor, Towson, 410-583-1170.

Dawn Kershner, 39, MidAtlantic Cardiovascular Associates, 3333 N. Calvert St., Ste. 500, 410-366-5600.

Wendy Post, 44, 110 W. Timonium Rd., Timonium, 410-308-7170.

DERMATOLOGY

Regina Anderson, age n/a, 4100 N. Charles St., Ste. 114, 410-889-7600.

Bernard A. Cohen, 58, Johns Hopkins at Green Spring Station, 10755 Falls Rd., Pavilion I, Ste. 350, Lutherville, 410-847-3767.

Barbara Honig, 45, 1777 Reisterstown Rd., Ste. 108, Pikesville. 410-580-2880.

Mark H. Lowitt, 47, 6565 N. Charles St., Ste. 315, 410-321-1195.

ENDOCRINOLOGY

David S. Cooper, 60, Johns Hopkins Hospital, 1830 E. Monument St., Ste. 333, 410-955-9270.

Paul W. Ladenso, 61, Johns Hopkins Outpatient Center, 601 N. Caroline St., 410-955-9270.

William Valente, 61, Saint Agnes Hospital, 900 Caton Ave., 410-368-2883.

REPRODUCTIVE ENDOCRINOLOGY

Eugene Katz, 54, 6569 N. Charles St., Ste. 406, Pavilion West, Towson, 410-512-8300.

Samuel Smith, 54, Franklin Square Hospital, 9105 Franklin Square Dr., Ste. 316, 443-777-7831.

EATING DISORDERS

Harry Brandt, 51, Center for Eating Disorders, Physicians Pavilion North, Ste. 300, 6535 N. Charles St., Towson, 410-938-5252.

Angela Guarda, 46, Johns Hopkins Hospital, 600 N. Wolfe St., Meyer Building, Rm. 101, 410-955-3863.

EMERGENCY MEDICINE

Michael Pipkin, 48, 9000 Franklin Square Dr., Department of Emergency Medicine, Franklin Square Hospital Center, 443-777-7046.

William Jaquis, age n/a, Chief, Department of Emergency Medicine, Sinai Hospital, 410-601-5737.

Jeffrey Sternlicht, 40, GBMC, 6701 North Charles St., 443-849-2528.

GASTROENTEROLOGY/HEPATOLOGY

Marshall Bedine, 68, 10751 Falls Rd., Ste. 301, Lutherville, 410-583-2633.

David Cromwell, 48, 10751 Falls Rd., Ste. 401, Lutherville, 410-583-2920.

Sudhir Dutta, 61, 2411 W. Belvedere Ave. Ste. 305, 410-601-5392.

Bruce Greenwald, 48, 22 S. Greene St., 410-328-8731.

Chris Hansen, 54, 10751 Falls Rd., Ste. 303, Lutherville, 410-583-2630.

William Ravich, 61, 10751 Falls Rd., Ste. 401, Lutherville, 410-616-2840.

Andrew Rosenstein, 43, 7505 Osler Dr., Ste. 502, Towson, 410-296-4210.

Louis Salas, 47, 4660 Wilkens Ave., Ste. 206, 410-247-7500.

Edward Wolfe, 55, 1838 Greene Tree Rd., Ste. 400, 410-602-7782.

FAMILY PRACTICE

Karen Perkins, 32, 9101 Franklin Square Dr., Ste. 205, 443-777-2000.

David L. Stewart, 53, University of Maryland, Department of Family and Community Medicine, 29 S. Paca St., 410-328-8792.

Sarah Whiteford, 40, Family Care Associates at GBMC, 6565 N. Charles St., Ste. 411, Physician Pavilion East, 443-849-2707.

GENETICS

Clair Francomano, “early 50s,” GBMC, Harvey Institute for Human Genetics, 6701 N. Charles St., Ste. 2326, Towson, 443-849-3131.

Ada Hamosh, 49, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, McKusick Nathans Institute of Genetic Medicine, 600 N. Wolfe St., Blalock Bldg. Rm. 1012D, 410-955-3071.

Antonie D. Kline, 49, Harvey Institute for Human Genetics, GBMC, 6701 N. Charles St., Ste. 2326, 443-849-3192.

GERIATRICS

Michael Gloth, 53, Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center, 5505 Hopkins Bayview Cir., 410-550-0925.

James P. Richardson, 55, 3421 Benson Ave., Ste. 210, 410-368-8979.

GYNECOLOGY

Harry W. Johnson Jr., 52, University of Maryland OB/GYN, 419 W. Redwood St., Ste. 500, 410-328-6640.

Andrew London, 62, 1300 York Rd., Ste. 100, Lutherville, 410-296-5863.

Michael Magan, 70, 120 Sister Pierre Dr., 410-337-9003.

OBSTETRICS

Missy Garavente, 41, 9000 Franklin Square Dr., 443-777-8005.

Deborah L. Hebb, 55, 6569 N. Charles St., Ste. 500, Towson, 410-296-6090.

ONCOLOGY, GYNECOLOGICAL

Fouad Abbas, 48, Morton Mower Office Building, 2411 W. Belvedere Ave., No. 206, 410-601-9030.

Francis C. Grumbine, 62, GBMC, 6569 N. Charles St., Ste. 306, 443-849-2765.

Dwight Im, 49, Weinberg Center at Mercy Hospital, 227 St. Paul Place, Floor 6, 410-332-9200.

Neil B. Rosenshein, 65, 227 St. Paul Pl., 6th Fl., 410-332-9200.

ONCOLOGY, HEMATOLOGY

Michael Auerbach, 60, 9110 Philadelphia Rd., Ste. 314, 410-780-4050.

Gary Cohen, n/a, Director, GBMC Cancer Center, 6569 N. Charles St., Ste. 205, Towson, 443-849-3051.

Carole Miller, 51, Saint Agnes Hospital, 900 S. Caton Ave., 410-368-2909.

Stephen Noga, 55, Director of Medical Oncology and Hematology and the Cellular Therapeutics Program at the Alvin & Lois Lapidus Cancer Institute, Sinai Hospital, 2401 W. Belvedere Ave., 410-601-4710.

William C. Waterfield, 63, Franklin Square Hospital, 9103 Franklin Square Dr., Ste. 2200, 443-777-7147.

INTERNAL MEDICINE

Richard Berg, 59, 10755 Falls Rd., Ste. 450, Lutherville, 410-583-2711.

Harry Kaplan, 45, 2700 Quarry Lake Dr., Ste. 290, 410-653-0073.

Jeffrey Magaziner, 41, Park Medical Associates, 10755 Falls Rd., Ste. 200, Lutherville, 410-583-7137.

Mary Newman, 57, Park Medical Associates, 10755 Falls Rd., Ste. 200, Lutherville, 410-583-7120.

Kenneth Williams, 53, Seton Medical Group, 2801 Foster Ave., and 1120 Rolling Rd., 410-342-0333.

INFECTIOUS DISEASES

Paul G. Auwaerter, 47, Johns Hopkins at Green Spring Station, 10751 Falls Rd., Lutherville, 410-583-2651.

John Bartlett, 68, 1830 E. Monument St., Rm. 447, 410-955-7634.

Richard A. Berg, 59, 10755 Falls Rd., Ste. 450, Lutherville, 410-583-2711.

Wayne Campbell, 56, 201 E. University Pl., Department of Medicine, Ste. 512, 410-554-2284.

Charles Haile, 61, 7505 Osler Dr., Ste. 404, Towson, 410-337-7097.

Andrew Mayrer, 61, Director, Division of Infectious Diseases, Sinai Hospital, 2435 W. Belvedere Ave., Ste. 17, 410-601-5941.

Donal K. Walshe, 45, Chief of Infectious Diseases, Saint Agnes Hospital, 827 Linden Ave., Ste. 3F, Armory Bldg., 410-225-8404.

Marcos Wolff, 47, 9000 Franklin Square Dr., 443-777-7138.

NEPHROLOGY

Mary T. Behrens, 50, 516 N. Rolling Rd., Ste. 107, Catonsville, 410-744-0890.

Kevin Rossiter, 52, 9103 Franklin Square Dr., Ste. 301, 443-777-6540.

Paul Scheel Jr., 48, 1830 E. Monument St., 410-955-5268.

Khalid Al-Talib, 52, 9103 Franklin Square Dr., Ste. 301, 443-777-6540.

Stephen Zemel, 57, 1838 Greene Tree Rd., Ste. 245, Pikesville, 410-602-7792.

NEUROLOGY

Jerold Fleishman, 53, 9000 Franklin Square Dr., 2nd floor, 443-777-7320.

Justin McArthur, 53, The Johns Hopkins Hospital Outpatient Center, 601 N. Caroline St., 410-955-3730.

Howard Moses, 79, 1205 York Rd., Ste. 39B, Lutherville, 410-494-0191.

Bruce Rabin, 51, Johns Hopkins at Green Spring Station, 10755 Falls Rd., Ste. 370, Lutherville, 410-616-7188.

Howard D. Weiss, 62, 2411 W. Belvedere Ave., Ste. 202, 410-367-7600.

OCCUPATIONAL/ENVIRONMENTAL MEDICINE

John Parkerson, 51, 4717 Falls Rd., 410-366-3627.

OPHTHALMOLOGY

Donald Abrams, 49, Krieger Eye Institute, Chief, Department of Ophthalmology, Morton Mower, M.D. Office Building, 2411 W. Belvedere Ave., 6th Floor, 410-601-6480.

Marc A. Honig, 45, 23 Crossroads Dr., Ste. 310 Owings Mills, 410-581-1500.

Allan D. Jensen, 65, 200 E. 33rd St., Ste. 426, 410-235-1133.

Gerami Seitzman, 36, Krieger Eye Institute at Sinai Hospital, 2411 W. Belvedere Ave., 6th Floor, 410-601-5991.

Amy Zimmerman, 44, 1105 North Point Blvd., Ste. 323, 410-282-5544.

ORTHOPEDICS, GENERAL

David Buchalter, 39, OrthoMaryland, 2700 Quarry Lake Dr., Ste. 300, 410-377-8900.

Frank Frassica, 56, The Johns Hopkins Hospital, 600 N. Wolfe St., 410-502-2698.

Stewart L. Koehler, 57, 6565 N. Charles St., Ste. 606, 410-583-0160.

Jerome Reichmister, 69, OrthoMaryland, 2700 Quarry Lake Dr., Ste. 300, 410-377-8900.

Sam Sydney, 52, Orthopedic Associates of Central Maryland, 3421 Benson Ave., Ste. 100, 410-644-1880.

ORTHOPEDICS, HAND

Mark A. Deitch, 44, OrthoMaryland, 2700 Quarry Lake Dr., Ste. 300, 410-377-8900.

Stacey H. Berner, 46, 10 Crossroads Dr., Ste. 210 Owings Mills. 410-484-8088.

Thomas Brushart, 60, The Johns Hopkins Outpatient Center, 601 N. Caroline St., 410-955-9663.

Steven L. Friedman, 49, OrthoMaryland, 2700 Quarry Lake Dr., Ste. 300, 410-377-8900.

Thomas Graham, 47, Chief, Division of Hand Surgery, Union Memorial Hospital, Johnston Professional Building, 2nd Floor, 3333 N. Calvert St., 410-235-5405.

Peter C. Innis, 50, 1400 Front Ave., Ste. 100, Lutherville, 410-296-6232.

Keith A. Segalman, 47, 1400 Front Ave., Lutherville, 410-296-6232; Union Memorial Hospital, 3333 N. Calvert St., 410-235-5405.

ORTHOPEDICS, FOOT/ANKLE

John Campbell, 44, The Institute for Foot and Ankle Reconstruction at Mercy, 301 St. Paul Pl., Lobby Level, 410-659-2800.

Mark Myerson, 58, Mercy Medical Center, 301 St. Paul Pl., 410-659-2800.

Lew Schon, 48, 3333 N. Calvert St., Ste. 400, 410-554-2891.

Ian Weiner, 48, OrthoMaryland, 2700 Quarry Lake Dr., Ste. 300, 410-377-8900.

ORTHOPEDICS, SPINE

Paul Asdourian, 53, Union Memorial, 3333 N. Calvert St., Ste. 400, 410-554-2867.

Myles D. Brager, 57, 1 Village Sq., Westminster, 410-876-8077.

Stephen Ludwig, 42, 1 Texas Station Ct., 3rd Floor, Timonium, 410-448-6400.

Lee Riley III, 49, 601 N. Caroline St., 410-955-6930.

Mark Rosenthal, 56, OrthoMaryland, 2700 Quarry Lake Dr., Ste. 300, 410-377-8900.

P. Justin Tortolani, 39, O’Dea Medical Arts Bldg., 7505 Osler Dr., Ste. 104, Towson, 410-337-8888.

ORTHOPEDICS, JOINT REPLACEMENT

David F. Dalury, 51, 8322 Bellona Ave., Ste. 100, 410-337-7900.

Ronald Delanois, 44, Center for Joint Preservation and Replacement, Sinai Hospital, 2401 W. Belvedere Ave., 410-601-5645.

Frank Ebert, 57, 3333 N. Calvert St., 4th Floor, 410-554-2850.

Mark Hungerford, age n/a, 301 St. Paul Pl., lobby level, 410-539-2227.

Dave A. Silber, age 51, 10 Crossroads Dr., Ste. 210, Owings Mills, 410-876-8077.

Michael Mont, 50, Center for Joint Preservation and Replacement, Sinai Hospital, 2401 W. Belvedere Ave., 410-601-5645.

Barry J. Waldman, age n/a, OrthoMaryland, 2700 Quarry Lake Dr., Ste. 300, 410-377-8900.

OTOLARYNGOLOGY

Charles W. Cummings, 74, Johns Hopkins Outpatient Center, 601 N. Caroline St., Ste. 1080, 410-955-7400.

Karl W. Diehn, 60, 6565 N. Charles St., Physicians Pavilion East, Ste. 601, 410-821-5151.

Andrew C. Goldstone, 50, 6565 N. Charles St., Ste. 601, 410-821-5151.

Howard Hessan, 52, 3449 Wilkens Ave., Ste. 200, 410-525-3818.

Theda C. Kontis, 49, Facial Plastic Surgicenter, 1838 Greene Tree Rd., Ste. 370, 410-486-3400.

Scott D. London, 39, Chesapeake Ear Nose and Throat, 23 Crossroads Dr., Ste. 400, Owings Mills, 410-356-2626.

Douglas C. McCorkle, 56, 10 Crossroads Dr., Ste. 100, Owings Mills, 410-363-7172.

MATERNAL FETAL MEDICINE

Lindsay Alger, 59, 419 W. Redwood St., Ste. 500, 410-328-6640.

Jessica Bienstock, 47, 600 N. Wolfe St., Nelson 2170, 410-502-3200.

Hugh E. Mighty, 53, 419 W. Redwood St., Ste. 500, 410-328-6640.

NEONATAL-PERINATAL MEDICINE

Karen A. Broderick, 53, Saint Agnes Hospital, 900 S. Caton Ave., 410-368-2500.

Melinda Elliott, 50, 2401 W. Belvedere Ave., Division of Neonatalogy, Sinai Hospital, 410-601-5217.

Sabah Helou, 54, Division of Newborn Medicine, Department of Pediatrics, GBMC, 6701 N. Charles St., 443-849-2792.

Sita Kottapalli, age n/a, Franklin Square Hospital, 9000 Franklin Square Dr., 443-777-7050.

Laurel Yap, 56, Harbor Hospital, 3001 S. Hanover St., 410-350-7186.

PAIN MANAGEMENT/CHRONIC PAIN

Brian Block, 41, Pain Medicine Specialists, 8322 Bellona Ave., Ste. 330, Towson, 410-825-6945.

Jason Brokaw, 37, OrthoMaryland, 2700 Quarry Lake Dr., Ste. 300, 410-377-8900.

Ibrahim Elsamanoudi, 62, Union Memorial Hospital, 201 E. University Pkwy., 410-554-6497.

Ross Sugar, 49, Sinai Hospital, 2401 W. Belvedere Ave., 410-601-6587.

PATHOLOGY

Jerry J. Marty, 60, 9000 Franklin Square Dr., Pathology Department, 443-777-8248.

Edward McCarthy, 65, The Johns Hopkins Hospital, 600 N. Wolfe St., 410-955-2660.

Arthur H. McTighe, 64, 201 E. University Pkwy., 410-554-2974.

PEDIATRICS, GENERAL

Harsha Bhagtani, 37, 5009 Honeygo Village Dr., Ste. 225, 443-725-2100.

Lauren Bogue, age n/a, Pavilion Pediatrics at Green Spring Station, Pavilion 1, Ste. 260, 10755 Falls Rd., Lutherville, 410-583-2955.

Michael G. Burke, 52, Saint Agnes Hospital, 900 S. Caton Ave., 410-368-2506.

Karen A. Broderick, 53, Saint Agnes Hospital, 900 S. Caton Ave., 410-368-2500.

Steven Caplan, 60, 2411 W. Belvedere Ave., Ste. 508, 410-578-8383.

Timothy F. Doran, 57, 6565 N. Charles St., Ste. 306, Towson, 443-849-6444.

Jason Goldstein, age n/a, Pavilion Pediatrics, 10755 Falls Rd., Ste. 260, Lutherville, 410-583-2955.

Alan M. Lake, 61, 10807 Falls Rd., Ste. 200, Lutherville, 410-321-9393.

PEDIATRIC, ALLERGY

Kenneth C. Schuberth, 61, 10807 Falls Rd., Ste. 200, Lutherville, 410-321-9393.

Robert Wood, 52, The Johns Hopkins Hospital, 600 N. Wolfe St., 410-955-5883.

PEDIATRIC, GENERAL SURGERY

James R. Buck, 61, GBMC, 6565 N. Charles St., Ste. 305, Towson, 443-849-6201.

Roger Voigt, 53, University of Maryland Medical Center, 22 S. Greene St., 800-492-5538.

PEDIATRICS, GASTROINTESTINAL

Alan M. Lake, 61, 10807 Falls Rd., Ste. 200, Lutherville, 410-321-9393.

Kalpana Murthy, 46, Herman and Walter Samuelson Children’s Hospital at Sinai, Morton Mower Medical Office Building, 2411 W. Belvedere Ave., Ste. 407, 410-601-8663.

David Tuchman, 58, Herman and Walter Samuelson Children’s Hospital at Sinai, Morton Mower Medical Office Building, 2411 W. Belvedere Ave., Ste. 407, 410-601-8663.

PEDIATRICS,CARDIOLOGY

Peter Gaskin, 44, University of Maryland Medical Center, 22 S. Greene St., 410-328-6666.

Janet Scheel, 50, Johns Hopkins Hospital, 601 N. Caroline St., 7th floor, 410-955-9714.

PEDIATRICS, HEMATOLOGY/ONCOLOGY

Joseph M. Wiley, 52, Sinai Hospital, 2401 W. Belvedere Ave., 410-601-5864.

PEDIATRICS, NEUROLOGY

Edward Gratz, age n/a, 2435 W. Belvedere Ave., Ste. 32, 410-601-8300.

Eileen Vining, 63, Johns Hopkins Outpatient Center, 601 ZN. Caroline St., 410-955-9100.

PEDIATRICS, ENDOCRINE

Barry Reiner, 52, 1001 Pine Heights Ave., Ste. 202, 410-646-4009.

PEDIATRICS, ORTHOPEDICS

John Herzenberg, 54, Rubin Institute for Advanced Orthopedics, Sinai Hospital, 2401 W. Belvedere Ave., 410-601-9562.

Paul D. Sponseller, 52, The Johns Hopkins Hospital, 601 N. Caroline St, 5th Fl., 410-955-3136.

PEDIATRICS, PSYCHIATRY

Stuart Varon, 50, 2324 W. Joppa Rd., Ste. 420, Lutherville, 410-583-1859.

Elizabeth Kastelic, 42, The Johns Hopkins Hospital, 600 N. Wolfe St.,

410-614-4948.

PEDIATRICS/PULMONARY

Anayansi Lasso-Pirot, 41, 22 S. Greene St., Ste. N5W40, 410-706-2443.

Laura Sterni, 46, Mt. Washington Pediatric Hospital, 1708 W. Rogers Ave.; Johns Hopkins Childrens Center, 600 N. Wolfe St., 410-955-2035.

PHYSICAL MEDICINE, REHAB

Scott E. Brown, 48, Chairman, Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Sinai Hospital, 2401 W. Belvedere Ave., 410-601-6585.

Lisa Enders-Grant, 41, OrthoMaryland, 2700 Quarry Lake Dr., Ste. 300, 410-377-8900.

Gayle Schwartz, 51, 1920 Greenspring Dr., Ste. 125, Timonium, 410-308-4900.

Michael Shear, 55, 1920 Greenspring Dr., Ste. 125, Timonium, 410-308-4900.

PSYCHIATRY

Paul McClelland, 61, Saint Agnes Hospital, 900 S. Caton Ave., 410-368-2737.

PULMONARY

Philip Buescher, 54, Union Memorial Hospital, 201 E. University Pkwy., 410-467-4470.

Michael Lansing, 54, Jacobs, Lansing, and Mishkin, PA, Woodholme Medical Building, 1838 Greene Tree Rd., Ste. 350, Pikesville, 410-484-5686.

Jason Marx, 43, 7505 Osler Dr., Ste. 409, Towson, 410-321-5651.

Stephen R. Selinger, 56, Director of Critical Care, Franklin Square Hospital, 9103 Franklin Square Dr., Ste. 300, 410-682-5282.

Dennis Smith, 58, 3449 Wilkens Ave., 410-644-5112.

RADIATION ONCOLOGY

Cengiz Aygun, 57, Radiation Oncology Affiliates of Maryland, 9105 Franklin Square Dr., Ste. 100, 410-6820-6800.

Albert L. Blumberg, 57, GBMC, 6701 N. Charles St., Towson, 443-849-2540.

Mark J. Brenner, 59, Sinai Hospital, 2401 W. Belvedere Ave., Dept. of Radiation Oncology, 410-601-5689.

Richard S. Hudes, age n/a, Section Chief, Saint Agnes Hospital Cancer Center, 900 Caton Ave., 410-368-2965.

RADIOLOGY, GENERAL DIAGNOSTIC

Blair Andrew, 56, Advanced Radiology, 7253 Ambassador Rd., 443-436-1100.

Noah Lightman, 65, Chief, Department of Radiology, Sinai Hospital/Lifebridge Health, 2401 W. Belvedere Ave., 410-601-6530.

Loralie Ma, 45, Advanced Radiology, 7253 Ambassador Rd., 443-436-1100.

RADIOLOGY, BREAST

Judy M. Destouet, 61, Advanced Radiology, Pamona Sq., Ste. 112, 1700 Reisterstown Rd., 410-580-2100.

Nagi Khouri, age n/a, The Johns Hopkins Hospital, 601 N. Caroline St., 410-955-4100.

H. Rosy Singh, 46, Advanced Radiology, 7253 Ambassador Rd., 443-436-1110.

REHABILITATIVE/PALLIATIVE MEDICINE

Scott E. Brown, 48, Chairman, Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Sinai Hospital,

2401 W. Belvedere Ave., 410-601-6585.

Howard Hoffberg, 52, 10085 Red Run Blvd., Suite 404, Owings Mills, 410-363-7246.

RHEUMATOLOGY

Ira T. Fine, 60, 10753 Falls Rd., Ste. 225, Lutherville, 410-583-2828.

David Hellmann, 58, 4940 Eastern Ave., 410-550-6825.

Howard W. Hauptman, 54, 1220B E. Joppa Rd., Ste. 310, 410-494-1888.

John Meyerhoff, age n/a, Sinai Hospital, 2435 W. Belvedere Ave., Ste. 21, 410-601-8389.

RHEUMATOLOGY, PEDIATRIC

Stephen George, 51, 4801 Dorsey Hall Dr., Ste. 226, Ellicott City, 410-992-7440.

SLEEP SPECIALIST

Brian Bohner, 51, Pulmonary and Critical Care Associates of Baltimore, 6535 N. Charles St., Ste. 550, Towson, 410-494-1662.

Robert Meny, 64, Pulmonary and Critical Care Associates of Baltimore, 7505 Osler Dr., Ste. 409, Towson, 410-321-5651.

SPORTS MEDICINE

Jon Koman, 41, OrthoMaryland, 2700 Quarry Lake Dr., Ste. 300, 410-377-8900.

Leslie S. Matthews, 58, Chief of Orthopedic Surgery, Union Memorial Hospital, 3333 N. Calvert St., Ste. 400, 410-554-2865.

Teri McCambridge, 40, 8322 Bellona Ave., Ste. 100, Towson, 410-337-7900.

Andrew M. Tucker, 48, 1407 York Rd., Ste. 100-A, Lutherville, 410-821-8062.

SURGERY, BARIATRIC

Alex Gandsas, 46, Head of division, bariatric surgery, Sinai Hospital, 2435 W. Belvedere Ave., Ste. 15, 410-601-4486.

Christina Li, 39, Sinai Hospital, 2435 W. Belvedere Ave., Ste. 15, 410-601-4486.

Thomas Magnuson, 50, Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center, 4940 Eastern Ave., 410-550-0409.

David von Rueden, 60, 700 Geipe Rd., Ste. 274, Catonsville, 410-368-3003.

Kuldeep Singh, 44, 7625 Maple Lawn Blvd., Ste. 145, Fulton, 301-490-2193.

SURGERY, BREAST

Kristen Fernandez, 42, Franklin Square Hospital, 9101 Franklin Square Dr., Ste. 110, 443-777-6500.

Neil B. Friedman, 51, The Hoffberger Breast Center at Mercy, 227 St. Paul Pl., 410-332-9330.

Scott E. Maizel, 58, Director, Breast Cancer Risk Assessment Program, GBMC, Sandra and Malcolm Berman Comprehensive Breast Care Center, 6701 N. Charles St., Ste. 3105, Towson, 443-849-2600.

Lauren A. Schnaper, 61, GBMC, Sandra and Malcolm Berman Comprehensive Breast Care Center, 6701 N. Charles St., Ste. 3105, Towson, 443-849-2600.

Michael J. Schultz, 62, Director, Breast Center, St. Joseph Medical Center, 7501 Osler Dr., Ste. 205, Towson, 410-427-5510.

SURGERY, CARDIAC

Duke Cameron, 57, The Johns Hopkins Hospital, 600 N. Wolfe St., 410-955-2698.

R.C. Stewart Finney Jr., 50, St. Joseph Medical Center, 7601 Osler Dr., Ste. W255, Towson, 410-337-1783.

Michael Fiocco, 49, Chief of Cardiac Surgery at Union Memorial Hospital, 3333 N. Calvert St., Ste. LL08, 410-554-6550.

Alejandro Sequeira, 66, Head, Division of Cardiac Surgery, Sinai Hospital, 2435 W. Belvedere Ave., Ste. 35, 410-601-0900.

SURGERY, COLON RECTAL

P. Jeffrey Ferris, 51, 9103 Franklin Square Dr., Ste. 307, 443-777-6225.

Debra A. Vachon, 49, 301 St. Paul Pl., 410-783-5800.

SURGERY, GENERAL

J. Lawrence Fitzpatrick, 52, Mercy Medical Center, 301 St. Paul Pl., Ste. C304, 410-332-9265.

Marc Gertner, 62, General Surgery Specialists, 23 Crossroads Dr., Ste. 410, Owings Mills, 410-581-0700.

Frank S. Rotolo, 54, 1205 York Rd., Lutherville, 410-821-6260.

Viney Setya, 54, Associate Chairman and Section Chief, general surgery, Saint Agnes Hospital, 3421 Benson Ave., Ste. 210, 410-368-2700.

SURGERY, HEPATO-BILIARY

John Cameron, 71, Johns Hopkins Hospital, 600 N. Wolfe St., 410-955-5464.

Mark H. Fraiman, 46, 7501 Osler Dr., Ste. 204, Towson, 410-427-2024.

NEUROSURGERY

Henry Brem, 57, Chair of Neurosurgery, The Johns Hopkins Hospital, 410-955-2248.

Ira M. Garonzik, 37, Baltimore Neurosurgery and Spine Center, Mirowski Medical Office Bldg., 5051 Greenspring Ave., Ste. 101, 410-664-3680.

Rafael Tamargo, 51, The Johns Hopkins Hospital, 600 N. Wolfe St., Meyer Building, Room 8-181, 410-614-1533.

Neal J. Naff, 43, Chesapeake Neurosurgery, 10751 Falls Rd., Ste. 301, Lutherville, 410-616-7600.

PEDIATRICS, NEUROSURGERY

Benjamin S. Carson, 58, The Johns Hopkins Children’s Center, Department of Neurosurgery, 600 N. Wolfe St., Harvey 811, 410-955-7888.

George I. Jallo, 43, The Johns Hopkins Hospital, 600 N. Wolfe St., Harvey Building, Room 811, 410-955-7851.

SURGICAL ONCOLOGY, GENERAL

Mukund S. Didolkar, 66, Surgical Oncology Associates, 2401 W. Belvedere Ave., 1st Floor, 410-601-8317.

Edward C. McCarron, 38, 9103 Franklin Square Dr., Ste. 2300, 443-777-7911.

Armando Sardi, 54, Institute for Cancer Care at Mercy, 227 St. Paul Place, 4th Fl., 410-332-9294.

John Zapas, 42, Chief, Center for Surgical Oncology, Franklin Square Hospital, 9103 Franklin Square Dr., Ste. 2300, 443-777-7911.

SURGICAL ONCOLOGY, HEAD AND NECK

Robert Ord, 61, 650 West Baltimore St., Ste. 1401, 410-706-6195.

John R. Saunders Jr., 64, Chief of medical staff, GBMC, 6569 N. Charles St., Physicians Pavilion West, Ste. 401, Towson, 443-849-8940.

SURGERY, ORAL MAXILLOFACIAL

Anthony Tufaro, 54, The Johns Hopkins Hospital, 601 N. Caroline St., 410-955-9846.

SURGERY, PLASTIC RECONSTRUCTIVE (Not cosmetic)

Paul N. Manson, 65, Chief of the Department of Cosmetic and Facial Plastic Surgery at The Johns Hopkins Hospital, 601 N. Caroline St., 410-955-6897.

Paul Ringelman, 51, 7401 Osler Dr., Ste. 208, 410-823-3885.

SURGERY, RETINA AND VITREOUS

Joseph B. Harlan Jr., 42, 1209 York Rd., Ste. 200, Lutherville, 410-821-9490.

SURGERY, THORACIC

Richard Battafarano, 47, Stoller Pavilion, University of Maryland, Marlene and Stewart Greenanbaum Cancer Center, 22 S. Greene St., 410-328-6366.

Richard Heitmiller, 55, Chief of Surgery, Union Memorial Hospital, 3333 N. Calvert St., Ste. 610, 410-554-2063.

Gavin Henry, 38, 900 Caton Ave., Box 207, 410-368-2730.

Mark Krasna, 51, St. Joseph Cancer Institute, 7501 Osler Dr., Ste. 104, Towson, 410-427-2220.

Lynne Skaryak, 46, Sinai Hospital, 2435 W. Belvedere Ave., Ste. 41, 410-601-6491.

Stephen Yang, 50, Johns Hopkins Outpatient Center, 601 N. Caroline St., 8th Floor, 410-614-3891.

SURGERY, TRANSPLANT

Stephen T. Bartlett, 55, University of Maryland Medical Center, 22 S. Greene St., Room N4E40, 410-328-8407.

Andrew Cameron, 40, 720 Rutland Ave., 410-614-2989.

SURGERY, TRAUMA

Thomas Genuit, 45, 2435 W. Belvedere Ave., Ste. 42, 410-601-0600.

Thomas M. Scalea, 58, R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center, 22 S. Greene St., 410-328-8976.

SURGERY, VASCULAR

James H. Black III, 40, The Johns Hopkins Hospital, 600 N. Wolfe St., 410-955-1708.

Peter Mackrell, 41, 2411 W. Belvedere Ave., Ste. 301, 410-601-0500.

Samer Saiedy, 43, 7600 Osler Drive, Suite 107, Towson, 410-825-4530.

UROLOGY

William Dowling, 45, Chesapeake Urology Associates, 6830 Hospital Dr., Ste. 204, 410-391-6131.

Brad Lerner, 50, Chief of Urology, Union Memorial Hospital, 3333 N. Calvert St., Ste. 600, 410-467-7665.

We’ve been on a quest throughout history for places that offer restorative powers. From Roman baths to hot springs and even the proverbial fountain of youth, we’ve always sought the ultimate source of rejuvenation. Today, spas and salons are where we go to ease our tensions and hopefully emerge fresher and feeling younger. But do the myriad treatments really work? We set out to uncover some of the more unusual “spa miracles” in the area and discovered plenty to intrigue and delight us. From 24-karat gold facials that Cleopatra would have loved to infrared lights that annihilate sunspots, we found that spas and salons are reaching back into the ancient past and forward into the technological frontier to help us find our most improved selves. We give you an overview of some of the treatments. Check with your local salon to see if it does these procedures, too.

Yam-and-Pumpkin Enzyme Peel
Where it’s done K. Co. Design Salon and Day Spa, 6080 Falls Rd., 410-377-7727, kcodesign.com.
How it’s done Everything used in this treatment is organic and smells great. Aesthetician Leah Pelovitz starts with a sweet red-rose cleanser to clean your face, then follows with a pear-and-poppy-seed microderm polisher. A tiny roller helps prevent breakouts—which can sometimes occur after facials—by using electrotherapy to clean your pores. Then, the yam-and-pumpkin enzyme peel makes your face tingle while Pelovitz massages your neck, arms, and hands.
What it costs $100 or $400 for a series of five treatments.
Does it work? “My skin felt really healthy. It had a nice glow,” says Grace Wagner of Baltimore, who had the yam-and-pumpkin peel to celebrate her 40th birthday. “It was really gentle, and I never had a breakout.”

Facelift Acupuncture
Where it’s done East-West Healing Arts, 1321 Generals Hwy., Suite 203, Crownsville, 410-923-0090, eastwesthealingarts.com.
How it’s done If you’ve considered subjecting yourself to a needle full of Botox for an aesthetic boost, then you probably wouldn’t shy away from outlining your frown lines and jowls with a series of thin acupuncture needles. Registered nurse and acupuncturist Megan Gordon-Hall says facial rejuvenation acupuncture can reduce facial lines and improve skin tone. But her full-body, holistic approach goes deeper. During an hour-and-a-half consultation, she examines your color, sound, emotion, and odor (she sniffs the back of your neck and looks at your tongue). “I’m making a determination about what underlying pathology there might be that has contributed to their facial imbalances,” she says. “In Chinese medicine, the face is a reflection of the internal space.”
What it costs $125.
Does it work? Louise Waynant, a Bowie grandmother of two, says she uses acupuncture instead of face creams because acupuncture doesn’t irritate her sensitive skin and it helps her with her digestive conditions. She says the treatment she has done on her face doesn’t hurt. “It feels like little needles,” she says. After the treatment (which she does monthly), “There’s the appearance of being in good health, being rested,” she says.

Lipomassage
Where it’s done Wraptured, 921 E. Fort Ave., in Studio 921 Salon & Day Spa, Federal Hill, wraptured.net.
How it’s done You wear a body stocking for this cellulite-targeting treatment. The technician directs a device that uses suction to manipulate and break up your cellulite. Then, you drink a lot of water to flush the waste from your body. “It feels like a deep, therapeutic massage, but it goes deeper than the hands can go,” says Wraptured owner Kathy Hill, who adds that the treatment increases blood flow and relieves sore muscles.
What it costs $150.
Does it work? Danielle Munoz of Baltimore is a petite woman who could always slip into a size 4. But she battles cellulite all the same. “I gain all my weight in my legs and hips,” says Munoz, 29. “The lipomassage has helped so much.” The treatment is relaxing, she says, but she has to repeat it regularly to maintain the results. It’s worth it, she claims. She now wears a smaller size, and her co-workers have noticed that her legs are thinner. “It’s a big difference,” she maintains.

Chocolate Wrap
Where it’s done Mt. Washington Spa, 1600 Kelly Ave., 410-664-3400, mwspa.com.
How it’s done This treatment is one that will surely satisfy the senses regardless of what it does for the skin. The warm chocolate mask laid over the skin is meant to draw toxins out of the skin and soothe aching muscles.
What it costs $125.
Does it work? Honestly, not as well as some other treatments, says salon owner Vesna Stojanovic. “With chocolate, you just feel good. I didn’t see too much change in the skin.”

Human Hair Extensions
Where it’s done Morgan Gerard, 101 Annapolis St., Annapolis, 410-263-1812, morgangerard.com.
How it’s done The hair that stylist David Ott uses in his human-hair extensions comes from a temple in India, where women braid their long hair, then cut it off as a sacrifice. Since it comes in a braid, the hair cuticle is facing the same direction, which Ott says helps prevent tangling—a key to maintaining a good-looking head of hair extensions. The hair comes in a range of colors, textures, and lengths, and is applied in small groups of 80 to 100 strands at a time with a special adhesive that can withstand swimming, curling, and coloring. The application process can take as long as eight to 10 hours. “Come with nothing else planned that day,” says Ott. To maintain the hair, you must use a brush that has retractable bristles that glide gently over the bonds two or three times a day and special shampoos. The extensions last four to six months.
What it costs $1,500 for an application of a full head of extensions plus the cost of the hair, which can run $800 more.
Does it work? The long, blond hair extensions that fall to the middle of Kimberlee Neuman’s back were the 26-year-old’s breakup present to herself. “It’s one of those guilty indulgences,” says the Bowie resident, who has maintained the cascading locks for five months.

Fish Massage
Where it’s done L&N Nails and Tanning, 1411 B Merritt Blvd., Dundalk, 410-282-9211.
How it’s done When John Ho brought tiny garra rufa fish to nibble the dead skin off clients’ feet at his Alexandria, Virginia, salon, he found it was a tough sell. Then, he let customers stick their hands in a tank of fish to test it out. Soon, they were willing to dip their toes in a basin full of the fish. The procedure originated in Turkey as a full-body exfoliation to treat skin conditions in the 1800s. Ho decided to use the garra rufa fish just on feet. Now, he has brought the fish to the L&N Nails and Tanning Salon in Dundalk for Baltimoreans to try. As long as you have no abrasions or open wounds, you can spend 15 to 30 minutes in a fish foot bath and follow the treatment with a traditional pedicure.
What it costs $35 for 15 minutes, $40 for 20 minutes, $50 for 30 minutes of fish nibbling; a traditional pedicure is extra.
Does it work? Carolyn White, 61, who was visiting from Alamogordo, New Mexico, heard about Diane Sawyer getting a fish pedicure on Good Morning America and wanted to give it a try. “It kind of feels like little shocks—in a good way. It’s very strange because even though [the fish are] on your feet, you can kind of feel it all the way up your leg.” She expected the fish to spend most of their time on the hard skin on her big toe, but they surprised her by spending most of their time nibbling under her ankles.

Hydrating Moor Mud Wrap
Where it’s done Elizabeth Jacob Spa and Salon, 18821 Frederick Rd., Parkton, 410-357-0833, elizabethjacobspa.com.
How it’s done Slathering yourself with mud from Australia is a great way to clear your system of the impurities that can build up after a night of partying or a summer of sun damage, says aesthetician Cara Strzegowski. She recommends starting with a sea-salt scrub to exfoliate. Then, she coats you with oil to make it easier to remove the detoxifying mud. She covers everything except your face in mud and then wraps you in a heating blanket for a half-hour. After you shower off the mud, Strzegowski gives you a light massage with a heavy moisturizing cream. The whole treatment takes about an hour-and-a-half.
What it costs Salt Glow at the Sea, $55; Hydrating Moor Mud Wrap, $129.
Does it work? Stacie Miller of Spring Grove, Pennsylvania, described the mud wrap as very relaxing. “Your skin feels wonderful afterwards,” says the 27-year-old, adding that the mud felt cool on her skin until she was wrapped in the heating blanket. “I felt it really cleansed my skin. It made my skin feel really soft.”

Eyelash Extensions
Where it’s done All About Me, 27 W. Chesapeake Ave., Towson, 410-828-8929, allaboutmedayspa.com.
How it’s done False eyelashes are so 1960s. These eyelash extensions look and feel like the real thing. Aestheticians get special training in how to apply an adhesive and natural looking extension to each individual eyelash. Clients lay on a massage table with a cooling pad under each eye, which holds the lower lashes out of the way. Most people say they hardly feel a thing during the procedure, which can take up to two hours.
What it costs $250-350, $75 for touch ups.
Does it work? “It’s the best investment I’ve made,” says Elena Koniecki, 48, of Bel Air, who gets her lashes done at All About Me. She says breast-cancer treatments left her eyelashes thin and uneven. Now, she says, they look so good she doesn’t wear makeup anymore. “I can go swimming, in a steam room, in saunas, and they stay on.” Every three to four weeks, she gets a touch up. “You can’t feel anything,” she says of the application. “The whole process is really relaxing. I fall asleep most of the time. They catch me snoring.”
Tiffany Rotan, 25, of Eldersburg, is a Ravens Playmaker, who likes the cosmetic boost she gets from her extensions at All About Me. She’s not a cheerleader, but her job involves appearing at Baltimore Ravens promotional events and posing for pictures with fans. “We’re supposed to be very glamorous at the games, and instead of wearing false lashes, these save me time and they look better,” she says.

Raindrop Therapy
Where it’s done La Clinica Salon & Day Spa, 1624 York Rd., Timonium, 410-828-7464, laclinicadayspa.com.
How it’s done You lay on a table with your head turned to the side, and a candle made of a cone of linen dipped in paraffin wax is placed in your ear and lit at the top. The smoke creates a vacuum in the cone, which sucks debris out of your ear canal. The treatment, which originated with Native American Indians, takes a half hour for both ears.
What it costs $40 for both ears.
Does it work? Aesthetician Megan Dearstine had the procedure done on her own ears and describes the sensation as a slight pressure with some crackling sounds. She recommends the treatment for anyone with chronic problems like sinus infections, ear infections, and headaches—but she urges clients with medical issues to check with their doctors first. “When you’re done, your head just feels really clear, almost like you can hear better instantly.”

Photo Rejuvenation
Where it’s done Jordan Thomas Salon & Spa, 111 Fulford Ave., Bel Air, 410-879-6600, jordanthomassalonandspa.com.
How it’s done If sunspots, broken capillaries, fine lines, and acne are getting in the way of smooth-looking skin, some targeted infrared light might do the trick. At Jordan Thomas, aesthetician Jodi Encapera starts you off with a European facial that includes pore cleansing, exfoliations, extractions, and massage. Then, she holds a small LED infrared light over problem areas on your face for about 30 seconds. The red light increases collagen and elastin production. The blue light targets acne.
What it costs $350 for a series of six treatments.
Does it work? Encapera says dark spots will be lighter, broken capillaries will be diminished, and fine lines will be softer at the end of treatments.

Cinnamon-and-Paprika Cellulite Treatment
Where it’s done Spa in the Valley, 118 Shawan Rd., Hunt Valley, 410-771-0200, spainthevalley.com.
How it’s done Cinnamon and paprika can do more than simply add flavor. They stimulate heat and circulation, bringing oxygen and blood flow to problem areas and creating a hot, tingling sensation. The cinnamon-and-paprika treatment is applied to clients’ cellulite while they are in a capsule (like a tanning bed) that closes over the body—but not the head. The pod allows heat to stimulate the cinnamon and paprika to break down the cellulite, regenerating collagen and burning fat cells. After the heat treatment, clients move to a massage room, where more cinnamon and paprika is worked into their cellulite to break it down further.
What it costs $107.
Does it work? Massage department manager Cheryl Hicks says, “We had an aesthetician who had a series [of treatments], and by the third one, the cellulite was greatly reduced.” She says spreading on a little cinnamon and paprika moisturizer before a workout can help use the heat you create with your muscles to go to work on your cellulite.

24-Karat Gold Facial
Where it’s done Mt. Washington Spa, 1600 Kelly Ave., 410-664-3400, mwspa.com.
How it’s done Perhaps Cleopatra slept in a gold mask every night because she knew that gold helps skin cells rapidly change. “When we get older, our skin cells aren’t changing fast enough,” says Vesna Stojanovic, owner of the Mt. Washington Spa. When the 24-karat gold is rubbed into your skin, cells rush to the surface to protect the skin from this foreign element, she says. The treatment begins with 15 minutes of massaging creams into the skin to make it moist enough for the gold sheets to stick. Then, a cool steam is applied to help the gold penetrate your skin. Finally, the gold is massaged into your skin until it disappears. “When the gold goes in,” says Stojanovic, “it pushes all the toxins out on the surface.”
What it costs $275.
Does it work? Attorney Susan R. Green of Worthington Valley won’t divulge her age because she says the gold facial treatment and others she gets at Mt. Washington Spa keep her looking younger than she really is. “I have a very stressful business, very demanding on my time. The hour-and-a-half I spend with Vesna—it gives you back a week of your life. You can relax.” She says the treatments minimize the appearance of age and wrinkles and keep her skin hydrated and glowing.

Lomi Lomi Polynesian Massage
Where it’s done About Faces Day Spa & Salon, 1501 S. Clinton St., 410-675-0099, aboutfacesdayspa.com.
How it’s done In ancient Polynesia, a spiritual doctor would perform this type of rhythmic massage to release tension and pain and to connect the body, heart, and soul, says Jill Thomas, who performs a one-and-a-half-hour massage at About Faces. It’s a work out for Thomas. “You’re moving with the music, doing a lot of lunging, squatting, and bending,” she says. Clients enjoy the sensation of rocking while Thomas moves clockwise around their body, working her knuckles into joints to stimulate detoxification, relaxation, and to increase digestion.
What it costs $150.
Does it work? Carol Dunaway’s usual massage is the kind of hurts-so-good manipulation that releases golf-ball-sized tensions from her back, she says. But at Thomas’s urging, she gave the Lomi Lomi a try. She found it much more relaxing than her usual massage. “She moves your body back and forth,” says Dunaway, 52, of Bel Air. “I have a boat, and it reminds me of that rocking.”

Perhaps it’s not surprising that Carol Siegmeister got Lyme disease. The 71-year-old Pikesville resident is an avid gardener and she sees deer in her neighbrhood often enough: “Donner and Blitzen live in my backyard,” she says. What is surprising is that Siegmeister went through an approved treatment for the disease but never got well.

When first bitten, she thought the bumps on her ankle were poison ivy. Two weeks later, she developed a rash on her abdomen, a fever, and fatigue. She immediately went to her doctor and was diagnosed with Lyme disease. After treatment, she only got sicker.

“I am a triple type-A personality and I was hit with exhausting fatigue to the point that I was in bed a good bit of the day, which was terrible for me,” she explains. In addition, she suffered such severe cognitive dysfunction that she couldn’t run her interior-design business.

“New symptoms would emerge daily and I had no idea what was happening to me. I began to get lost in my own neighborhood, I had digestive problems, there was the chronic fatigue, I was unable to eat normally, I had flashing lights behind my eyes.”

While most people who are diagnosed and treated early for Lyme disease are cured, there is a small but terribly debilitated population that never gets well. It took almost two years for Siegmeister to feel better. A doctor carefully monitored her individualized care. Only in the past two months has she felt well enough to play golf again and eat properly, although she still tires easily.

Experts cannot even agree on what to call this persistent ailment, much less how to treat it. And the division between two distinct groups of longterm sufferers is so vitriolic that many experts fear research of the disease is getting bogged down by the controversy. But a small number of Baltimore-area physicians who specialize in Lyme disease are soldiering on anyway, trying to find help for the lingering form of the affliction.

Lyme disease is caused by an infection with a bacterium called Borrelia burgdorferi, which is usually transmitted by a deer tick bite. There are about 20,000 reported cases of Lyme disease in America annually and there were 1,248 reported cases of Lyme disease in Maryland in 2006, but experts agree that cases are vastly under-reported. Most people who get Lyme disease—though not all—develop a bull’s-eye-shaped rash around the bite area. The disease—which can strike people of any age—is treated with oral antibiotics and, for most people, that’s the end of the story.

Depending on who you ask, however, anywhere from 5 to 25 percent of people who have a well-defined Lyme disease diagnosis will develop the chronic form. These people receive treatment for Lyme disease but have symptoms that won’t give up. The lingering Lyme can be completely debilitating, imprisoning people in their homes, confining them to their beds. And there is no FDA-approved treatment for these patients.

But there’s no shortage of opinions as to what’s behind this disease and how to treat it. Although the Internet is full of snake-oil salesmen willing to capitalize on the desperation of sufferers with a host of unproven remedies, two recognized schools of thought exist. One side of the debate, which includes some patients and so-called “Lyme-literate” doctors, calls the disease “chronic Lyme disease.” The other side, occupied primarily by researchers, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), and the Infectious Disease Society of America (IDSA), calls it “post-Lyme syndrome.”

“People that call it chronic Lyme disease believe strongly that the cause is due to persistent, ongoing infection despite the initial antibiotic treatment, so their approach is to treat it with longer courses of antibiotics,” explains Dr. John Aucott, founder of the nonprofit Lyme Disease Research Foundation of Maryland. Aucott also runs a referral clinic for the care of patients with Lyme disease and its complications. He cared for Carol Siegmeister. “The post-Lyme group, which is often represented by the CDC and the Infectious Disease Society, believe that the infection is gone and the symptoms are a by-product of having been infected.”

Aucott firmly places himself on neither side of the debate but rather in the middle, struggling to help his patients with the information and treatments available (or lack thereof). It’s no wonder he doesn’t want to pick a side—the debate between the two dogmas is so ugly it rivals the Hatfields and McCoys. When the IDSA published its practice guidelines for Lyme disease—which clearly state that long-term antibiotic treatment is ineffective against post-Lyme syndrome—the Attorney General of Connecticut sued IDSA.

Insurance companies hopped onboard with the IDSA guidelines and used them to justify denying Lyme sufferers long-term antibiotic treatment. (Lyme-literate doctors often treat chronic Lyme disease with months, if not years, of oral and IV antibiotics.) Proponents of the chronic-Lyme theory believe IDSA and the CDC have a stranglehold over research and funding, are pushing Lyme-literate doctors out of practice, and are denying sick people access to treatment. For their part, the post-Lyme syndrome folks don’t think anyone has a hard-and-fast answer yet, and anyone who says he does is selling patients promises he might not be able to keep.

Dr. Paul Auwaerter is the clinical director for the division of infectious diseases at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He participated in the review of the IDSA guidelines and also helped author an article on the debate over post-Lyme syndrome that appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine last fall (and that raised no small amount of contention from the chronic Lyme set).

“We really don’t know what the best treatment strategies are and this is where, unfortunately, the science has lagged behind,” says Auwaerter. “We end up clearly falling more into the art of medicine.” Because there is no FDA-approved treatment for persistent Lyme disease, it falls to doctors to treat the symptoms affecting patients, using anything from cognitive-behavioral therapy to pain medication.

As if the waters needed to become muddier, the means of diagnosing the disease can be inaccurate and a lot is left to interpretation. Many people with persistent Lyme disease are mislabeled with fibromyalgia or chronic fatigue syndrome, or vice versa. The chronic Lyme advocates believe the illness is underdiagnosed by doctors. Physicians like Auwaerter think the chronic Lyme folks are too loose in their diagnosis criteria.

“A lot of times, these poor patients basically get told they’re crazy, which is tragic,” adds Aucott. “They usually get told they are depressed and that’s just a way for the physician to get them out of their office.”

Auwaerter is emphatic that he does not believe these patients are crazy and he does not believe the IDSA guidelines state that either. But there are doctors who routinely dismiss subjective symptoms as psychosomatic, and it’s that mentality that really lights a fire under Pat Smith.

Smith is the president of the Lyme Disease Association (LDA), a national nonprofit that provides funding for research, education, and prevention of Lyme disease and also some patient support. LDA is on the side of the chronic Lyme disease label.

“The problem comes into play because there’s a segment of mainstream medicine that says there’s no such thing as chronic Lyme disease—they say it’s all an autoimmune reaction,” she states. “They say there’s no disease and they feel, unfortunately, that these patients should not get any treatment.”

The IDSA states on its website that “an extensive review of scientifically rigorous studies and papers available to date has determined that there is no convincing biological evidence to support a diagnosis of chronic Lyme disease after completion of the recommended treatment.”

To Smith and those on her side, the IDSA guidelines are fundamentally flawed by bias.

“Because the guideline’s committees were composed of physicians who belong to the IDSA, they were all of the same mind,” says Smith. “They did not include any input from patients . . . they did not include any input from ILADS, the International Lyme and Associated Disease Society, or even from their own members who said, ‘We don’t agree with this position.'”

The IDSA states that long-term antibiotic use can have harmful side effects. While Smith doesn’t know that long-term antibiotic treatment is the absolute answer to chronic Lyme disease, she feels it is the best option available right now, one where the benefits outweigh the risks.

“We’re talking about people who have lost their useful lives, people who may be in their house for 10 years,” she explains. “Antibiotics give them the ability to have a life.”

One thing both sides can agree on is that more research needs to be done—and that their own infighting might be hindering that process.

“When I look here in academics and I train infectious disease fellows, fellows don’t want to see Lyme patients,” says Auwaerter. “They don’t want to enter this controversial area because it seems like it’s just a recipe for headaches. I think the debate, as it were, has gotten to such a level that it may stifle research.”

Ironically, both sides want many of the same things: research into the long-term nature of Lyme disease and how to treat it, and the development of better diagnostic tools.

“We desperately need more research,” Smith agrees. LDA currently is backing two bills in Congress to get $100 million over five years for research, education, and prevention of Lyme disease. But she fears the political climate swings to the side of the IDSA. “I don’t know what the answers are, but I know they need to be found, but they need to be found in a free scientific way, not in a way where a few people are controlling what comes out of this,” says Smith.

Whether the two sides can lay down their arms and work together remains to be seen, but persistent Lyme sufferers face many more hurdles.

Both researchers and pharmaceutical companies follow the money and there’s not much to be made either in the research of Lyme disease or the creation of pharmaceuticals for its treatment.

Aucott formed his foundation to support research when he tried to develop a research program for Lyme disease at Johns Hopkins and failed to get any CDC funding. This June, he’s embarking on a prospective trial of 100-200 patients with well-defined, early Lyme disease and tracking them for two years to evaluate their risk for developing the persistent form of the disease. But in the competitive world of grant money, Lyme disease simply lacks the doomsday cache needed to attract big bucks.

“When you put it next to bird flu, where people have scares of pandemics killing millions of people, or you put it next to bioterrorism, where you could have mass casualties, it doesn’t look as scary,” he laments.

Ultimately, it’s the patients who fall between the cracks. “No one wants to see these patients because there’s nothing you can do to help them that’s FDA-approved,” says Aucott. “For traditional guys like me, it’s hard to sit in front of a patient and tell them you don’t know why they still feel bad after you’ve treated them, and you don’t have anything else that’s obviously going to make them better. And it’s tragic. The poor patients get caught in the middle, and they just want to get better.”

How This List Was Created

This list is excerpted from The Best Doctors in America 2007 database, which includes approximately 41,000 doctors in more than 40 medical specialties. Best Doctors believes that physicians are the most qualified to evaluate the experience and skill sets of other physicians. Best Doctors asks physicians: “If you or a loved one needed a doctor in your specialty, to whom would you refer them?” Clinical status that is current, temporary, or indefinite is subject to change at any time per individual doctor. Please note that many physicians, particularly specialists, request or require a referral prior to accepting a new patient. The Best Doctors in America database is compiled and maintained by Best Doctors, Inc. For more information, visitbestdoctors.com, or contact Best Doctors by telephone 800-675-1199. Please note that lists of doctors are not available on the Best Doctors website. Best Doctors, Inc., has used its best efforts in assembling material for this list but does not warrant that the information contained herein is complete or accurate, and does not assume, and hereby disclaims, any liability to any person for any loss or damage caused by errors or omissions herein whether such errors or omissions result from negligence, accident, or any other cause. Copyright 2007 by Best Doctors, Inc. All rights reserved. This list, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission. No commercial use of the information in this list may be made without permission of Best Doctors, Inc. No fees may be charged, directly or indirectly, for the use of the information in this list without permission. “Best Doctors”, “The Best Doctors in America”, and the Best Doctors logo are registered trademarks of Best Doctors, Inc., and are used under license.

Navigating the bureaucratic seas of the American health care system can be a daunting task for even the healthiest of us. When we get sick, all we want to do is tell our woes to a doctor who will heal us. But to get to that doctor, there’s a labyrinth of paperwork and information sheets and referrals and pre-approvals and HIPAA forms and insurance card photocopying and . . . well, sometimes, it all seems like things are designed to keep us from getting to our doc. While we can’t make the paperwork go away, we’re doing our part to make things a little easier. Here’s our latest compendium of outstanding physicians from across the Baltimore area. The list reflects the demographics of the region’s medical community—which means there are lots of doctors from the city’s two giant teaching hospitals, Johns Hopkins and the University of Maryland Medical Center. There are many from big suburban hospitals like Greater Baltimore Medical Center and St. Joseph. And there are more than a few private practice physicians as well. (To find out how this list was created, and how to best use it, please read “How This List Was Created” below.)

Remember, this article should be used as a starting point for your own research into finding a physician—do some homework about who is best for your own unique health situation. This is the biggest list we’ve ever printed, and we hope it helps you chart a healthy course to the best doctor for you.

Addiction Medicine
Donald R. Jasinski
Johns Hopkins Bayview Care Center
Department of Addiction Medicine
410-550-1906

Allergy and Immunology
Peter S. Creticos
Johns Hopkins Bayview Care Center
Department of Clinical Immunology
410-550-2301

Kenneth C. Schuberth
The Maryland Pediatric Group
10807 Falls Road, Suite 200, Lutherville
410-321-9393

Robert A. Wood
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Division of Pediatric Allergy and Immunology
410-955-5883

Anesthesiology
Paul Christo
Johns Hopkins School of Medicine
Division of Pain Medicine
410-955-1818

Todd Dorman
Johns Hopkins University
School of Medicine
Department of Anesthesiology
and Critical Care Medicine
410-955-5928

Richard P. Dutton
University of Maryland
Medical Center
R Adams Cowley
Shock Trauma Center
410-328-2628

Blaine Easley
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Department of Pediatric Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine
410-955-7610

Timothy B. Gilbert
University of Maryland Medical Center
Department of Anesthesiology
410-328-6120

Andrew P. Harris
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Department of Anesthesiology
410-955-2544

Andrew M. Malinow
University of Maryland Medical Center
Department of Anesthesiology
410-328-6120

Douglas G. Martz Jr.
University of Maryland Medical Center
Department of Anesthesiology
410-328-6120

Edward D. Miller Jr.
Johns Hopkins School of Medicine
Dean’s Office
410-955-3180
* Primarily administrative

David Gregory Nichols
Johns Hopkins School of Medicine
Department of Pediatric Anesthesia
410-955-8401

Mary Njoku
University of Maryland Medical Center
Department of Anesthesiology
410-328-6120

Daniel Nyhan
Johns Hopkins Hospital
410-955-7519

Srinivasa Raja
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Department of Anesthesiology
and Critical Care Medicine
410-955-7246
* Accepting new patients for pain management

Anne M. Savarese
University of Maryland
Medical Center
Department of Anesthesiology
410-328-6120

David L. Schreibman
University of Maryland
Medical Center
Department of Anesthesiology
410-328-6120

Frederick Sieber
Johns Hopkins Bayview
Medical Center
Department of Anesthesiology
410-550-0942

Myron Yaster
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Division of Pediatric Anesthesia and Critical Care Medicine
410-955-2393

Cardiovascular Disease

Stephen C. Achuff
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Division of Cardiology
410-955-7670

Robert Michael Benitez
University of Maryland Medical Center
Division of Cardiology
410-328-5396

Ronald D. Berger
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Division of Cardiology
410-614-2751
*Accepting new arrhythmia patients

Roger Blumenthal
Johns Hopkins Heart Health at Timonium
Ciccarone Preventative Cardiology Center
410-308-7170

Jeffrey A. Brinker
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Division of Cardiology
410-955-6086

Hugh Calkins
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Division of Cardiology
410-955-7405

Hunter C. Champion
Johns Hopkins University
School of Medicine
Division of Cardiology
410-502-0018
* Currently and indefinitely not accepting new patients

Mary Corretti
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Division of Cardiology
410-955-5000

Nicholas J. Fortuin
Johns Hopkins at Green Spring Station
10755 Falls Road, Lutherville
410-583-2666

Thomas Guarnieri
Midatlantic Cardiovascular Associates
410-825-5150
*Accepting new patients on a case by case basis

Carlos S. Ince Jr.
Midatlantic Cardiovascular Associates
410-644-5111

Edward K. Kasper
Johns Hopkins Bayview
Medical Center
Division of Cardiology
410-550-0536

Mark Kelemen
University of Maryland
Medical Center
Division of Cardiology
410-328-7877

Richard A. Lange
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Division of Cardiology
410-955-3116

Joao A. C. Lima
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Division of Cardiology
410-614-1284
* Primarily administrative and works in research

Mandeep R. Mehra
University of Maryland
Medical Center
Division of Cardiology
410-328-7716

Shellee Nolan
Midatlantic Cardiovascular Associates
410-583-1170

James K. Porterfield
Midatlantic Cardiovascular
Associates
410-825-5150

Jon R. Resar
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Division of Cardiology
410-614-1132

Stuart Russell
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Division of Cardiology
410-955-5708
* Accepting new heart failure patients

Steven Schulman
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Division of Cardiology
410-955-7378
* Temporarily not accepting new patients

Thomas A. Traill
Johns Hopkins Outpatient Center
Division of Cardiology
410-614-3140

Robert Vogel
University of Maryland
Medical Center
Division of Cardiology
410-328-8795

Ilan Wittstein
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Division of Cardiology
410-614-6258

Roy C. Ziegelstein
Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center
Department of Medicine
410-550-0523

Dermatology

Grant J. Anhalt
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Department of Dermatology
410-955-2992

Anthony Gaspari
University of Maryland Medical Center
Department of Dermatology
410-328-5766

Ronald Goldner
University of Maryland
Medical Center
Department of Dermatology
410-328-3167

Linda L. Lutz
University of Maryland Medical Center
Department of Dermatology
410-328-3167
* Accepting new cancer patients

Stanley J. Miller
1104 Kenilworth Drive,
Suite 201, Towson
443-279-0340

Warwick L. Morison
Johns Hopkins at Green Spring Station
10755 Falls Road,
Lutherville
410-847-3700

Eva Simmons-O’Brien
8320 Bellona Avenue,
Suite 20, Towson
410-821-7546

John W. Skouge
The Center for Surgical Dermatology
1302 Bellona Avenue, Lutherville
410-825-6810
* Accepting new skin cancer patients

Robert A. Weiss
Maryland Laser Skin and
Vein Institute
54 Scott Adam Road,
Suite 301, Hunt Valley
410-666-3960

S. Elizabeth Whitmore
Johns Hopkins Outpatient Center
Department of Dermatology
410-955-5933
* Accepting new patients.
Specializes in allergic contact dermatitis

Endocrinology and Metabolism

Douglas Wilmot Ball
Johns Hopkins University
School of Medicine
Division of Endocrinology
410-955-3663

Issam Essa Cheikh
Union Memorial Hospital
Diabetes and Endocrine Center
410-554-4511

David S. Cooper
Sinai Hospital
Department of Endocrinology and Metabolism
410-601-5961
* Accepting new thyroid disease patients. Available for consultations and second opinions

Paul William Ladenson
Johns Hopkins University
School of Medicine
Division of Endocrinology and Metabolism
410-955-9270

Francis Lee
Bay West Endocrine
6535 North Charles Street,
Suite 400N, Towson
410-828-7417
* Temporarily not accepting new patients.

W. Tabb Moore
Johns Hopkins Outpatient Center
Department of Internal Medicine
410-955-3663

Sally M. Pinkstaff
Sinai Hospital of Baltimore
Department of Endocrinology and Metabolism
410-601-5961

Christopher D. Saudek
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Division of Endocrinology and Metabolism
410-955-2132

Gary S. Wand
Johns Hopkins University
School of Medicine
Division of Endocrinology and Metabolism
410-955-7225

Family Medicine

Gillian Adams
Plumtree Family Health Center
104 Plumtree Road, Suite 102, Bel Air
410-569-4224
* Currently not accepting new patients

Richard Colgan
University of Maryland
Medical Center
Department of Family and
Community Medicine
410-328-8792

Barbara Gardner Cook
Johns Hopkins Community
Physicians at White Marsh
443-442-2300
* Currently not accepting new patients

Tyler Cymet
Sinai Hospital
Department of Family Medicine
410-601-6840

Mel Daly
Greater Baltimore Medical Center
Department of Geriatric Medicine
443-849-3184

Kevin S. Ferentz
University of Maryland Medical Center
Department of Family and Community Medicine
410-328-2686

Joyce King
Franklin Square Hospital Center
Department of Family Practice
443-777-2037
* Accepting new Helix patients

Ursula McClymont
Baltimore Medical Systems
410-558-4747

Sallie Rixey
Franklin Square Hospital Center
Department of Family Practice
443-777-2000
* Accepting new Helix patients

Kellie B. Smaldore
Smaldore Family Practice Associates
2227 Old Emmorton Road, Suite 220, Bel Air
410-515-9040
* Currently and indefinitely not accepting new patients

David Lesley Stewart
University of Maryland Medical Center
Department of Family and Community Medicine
410-328-8792

Paul A. Valle Jr.
Greater Baltimore Medical Center
443-849-3680

Joseph Zebley
Greenspring Medical Associates
2 Hamill Road, Suite 222
443-524-4481
* Accepting new patients that are participating in the MD Value in Prevention program. Available for referrals, consultations, and second opinions on a case by case basis to non-participating patients

Gastroenterology

Sudhir Dutta
Sinai Hospital
Sinai GI Associates
410-601-5392

Francis Giardiello
Johns Hopkins University
Division of Gastroenterology
410-955-2635

H. Franklin Herlong
Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center
Department of Gastroenterology
410-550-0791

David F. Hutcheon
Johns Hopkins at Green Spring Station
10755 Falls Road, Lutherville
410-583-2631
* Accepting new patients with Medicare and those participating in the Johns Hopkins Employee Health Plan

Anthony Nicholas Kalloo
Johns Hopkins Hospital and Health System
Department of Gastroenterology
410-955-9697

Esteban Mezey
Johns Hopkins at Green Spring Station
10755 Falls Road, Lutherville
410-955-4166

William J. Ravich
Green Spring Station
10751 Falls Road, Suite 401, Lutherville
410-616-2840

Paul J. Thuluvath
Johns Hopkins at Green Spring Station
10755 Falls Road, Lutherville
410-955-4166

Geriatric Medicine

Michele F. Bellantoni
Johns Hopkins Bayview Care Center
Division of Geriatric Medicine and Gerontology
410-550-0925
* Accepting new patients over age 65

Charles E. Boult
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg
School of Public Health
410-955-6546

John Russell Burton
Johns Hopkins Bayview Care Center
Division of Geriatric
Medicine and Gerontology
410-550-0925
* Currently and indefinitely not accepting new patients

Thomas E. Finucane
Johns Hopkins Bayview Care Center
Division of Geriatric
Medicine and Gerontology
410-550-0925

Steven R. Gambert
Sinai Hospital
Department of Medicine
410-601-6340
* Primarily administrative

Fred Michael Gloth III
Victory Springs Senior Health Associates
210 Business Center Drive,
Reisterstown
410-526-1490

Andrew P. Goldberg
Baltimore VA Medical Center
Department of Geriatric
Medicine/GRECC
410-605-7183

Hand Surgery

Thomas M. Brushart
Johns Hopkins Outpatient Center
Department of Orthopaedic Surgery
410-955-9663
* Accepting new patients with hand and/or nerve related problems

A. Lee Dellon
Dellon Institute for Peripheral Nerve Surgery
3333 North Calvert Street
Suite 370
410-467-5400
* Accepting new self-pay patients. Does not accept insurance

Thomas J. Graham
Union Memorial Hospital
The Curtis National Hand Center
410-235-3869

Infectious Disease

Anthony Amoroso
Institute of Human Virology
410-706-4613

Paul G. Auwaerter
Johns Hopkins at Green Spring Station
10755 Falls Road, Lutherville
410-502-7066

John G. Bartlett
Johns Hopkins University
Division of Infectious Diseases
410-614-3631

Wayne N. Campbell
Union Memorial Hospital
Department of Medicine
410-554-2284

Ellis S. Caplan
University of Maryland Medical Center
R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center
410-328-3656
* Currently not accepting new patients

Richard E. Chaisson
Johns Hopkins University
Center for Tuberculosis Research
410-955-1755
* Available for consultations to in-patients admitted to Johns Hopkins Hospital

Charles E. Davis
Institute of Human Virology
410-328-1900

Joel E. Gallant
Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
Division of Infectious Diseases
410-502-8650
* Accepting new patients on a case by case basis

Bruce L. Gilliam
Family Health Center
827 Linden Avenue
410-225-8083
* Above information is for HIV patients

Philip A. Mackowiak
VA Maryland Health Care System
Medical Care Clinical Center
410-605-7199
* Currently not accepting new patients

Thomas C. Quinn
Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
Division of Infectious Diseases
410-955-7635

Stuart C. Ray
Johns Hopkins University
Division of Infectious Diseases
410-614-6089

Robert Redfield
Institute of Human Virology
410-706-4613

Cynthia L. Sears
Johns Hopkins University
Division of Infectious Diseases
410-614-0141
* Accepting new HIV patients on a case by case basis

David L. Thomas
Johns Hopkins University
School of Medicine
Division of Infectious Diseases
410-955-0349

John W. Warren
University of Maryland
Medical Center
Division of Infectious Diseases
410-706-7560
* Primarily works in research

Jonathan M. Zenilman
Johns Hopkins Bayview
Medical Center
Division of Infectious Diseases
410-550-9080

Internal Medicine (General)

Jeffrey S. Alexander
120 Sister Pierre Drive, Suite 101, Towson
443-901-0301
* Currently not accepting new patients

Sheldon Amsel
UniversityCare at Waxter Center
410-396-1295

Charles S. Angell
Johns Hopkins at Green Spring Station
10755 Falls Road, Lutherville
410-583-7114

Bimal Ashar
Johns Hopkins Outpatient Center
Department of Internal Medicine
410-502-7453

John N. Aucott
Johns Hopkins at Green Spring Station
10755 Falls Road, Lutherville
410-583-7124
* Temporarily not accepting new patients

Paul G. Auwaerter
Johns Hopkins at Green Spring Station
10755 Falls Road, Lutherville
410-502-7066

Lee Randol Barker
Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center
|Division of General Internal Medicine
410-550-0509
* Currently not accepting new patients

Eric Biren Bass
1830 E. Monument Street,
Room 8068
410-955-0670
* Currently not accepting new patients. Available for referrals and second opinions

Stuart B. Bell
Union Memorial Hospital
Department of Internal Medicine
410-889-8388
* Currently and indefinitely not accepting new patients

Richard A. Berg
Johns Hopkins at Green Spring Station
10755 Falls Road, Lutherville
410-583-2711

Pratima Bose
301 St. Paul Place, Suite 312 E
410-332-9359

R. Dobbin Chow
Good Samaritan Hospital
443-444-4818

Sarah L. Clever
Johns Hopkins School of Medicine
Division of General Internal Medicine
410-955-5512
* Temporarily not accepting new patients

Joseph Cofrancesco Jr.
Johns Hopkins Outpatient Center
Department of Internal Medicine
410-955-1725

Dana Frank
Johns Hopkins at Green Spring Station
10755 Falls Road, Lutherville
410-583-7112

Gino Marcello Freeman
Greater Baltimore Medical Center
Department of Internal Medicine
443-849-3594

Neal M. Friedlander
Greater Baltimore Medical Center
Department of Internal Medicine
443-849-3594
* Currently and indefinitely not accepting new patients

Stephen H. Glasser
Health Associates
2700 Quarry Lake Drive
410-415-5814

Andrew P. Goldberg
Baltimore VA Medical Center
Department of Geriatric
Medicine/GRECC
410-605-7183
* Primarily works in research

Kenneth M. Greene
Greater Baltimore Medical Center
410-821-2800

Richard J. Gross
Johns Hopkins Community
Physicians at White Marsh
4924 Campbell Boulevard,
Suite 200
443-442-2300
* Temporarily accepting a limited number of new patients. Available for consultations, referrals, and second opinions

Tammy D. Hadley
Johns Hopkins at Green Spring Station
10755 Falls Road, Lutherville
410-583-7110

David Kafonek
Johns Hopkins at Green Spring Station
10755 Falls Road, Lutherville
410-583-2630

Harry W. Kaplan
4000 Old Court Road,
Suite 301, Pikesville
410-653-0000
* Temporarily not accepting new patients

David E. Kern
Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center
Division of General Internal Medicine
410-550-0509
* Currently not accepting new patients. Available for referrals.

Timothy L. Krohe
Johns Hopkins at Green Spring Station
10755 Falls Road, Lutherville
410-583-7108
* Temporarily not accepting new patients

Bruce A. Leff
Johns Hopkins Bayview
Medical Center
Division of Geriatric Medicine and Gerontology
410-550-0925

Thomas J. Lynch
Mercy Medical Center
Internal Medicine Primary Care
410-659-0808

Jeffrey Magaziner
Johns Hopkins at Green Spring Station
10755 Falls Road, Lutherville
410-583-2774

Nick Mellis
2352 York Road, Timonium
410-560-5652
* Currently not accepting new patients

Redonda Miller
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Department of Medicine
410-955-3010
Susan Molinaro
Johns Hopkins at Green Spring Station
10755 Falls Road, Lutherville
410-583-7110
* Temporarily not accepting new patients

Mary Newman
Johns Hopkins at Green Spring Station
10755 Falls Road, Lutherville
410-583-7120

Brent G. Petty
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Department of Internal Medicine
410-933-5320
* Currently and indefinitely not
accepting new patients

Gregory Prokopowicz
Johns Hopkins Outpatient Center
Department of Internal Medicine
410-955-5528
* Currently and indefinitely not
accepting new patients

Waiel Samara
Union Memorial Hospital
Department of Internal Medicine
410-889-8388

Patricia A. Savadel
Johns Hopkins at Green Spring Station
10755 Falls Road, Lutherville
410-583-7177
* Temporarily not accepting
new patients

William Schlott
Johns Hopkins Outpatient Center
Department of Internal Medicine
410-955-2065
* Currently not accepting
new patients

Lisa Simonson
Johns Hopkins Outpatient Center
Department of Internal Medicine
410-955-1111
* Currently not accepting
new patients

Stephen Sisson
Johns Hopkins Outpatient Center
Department of Internal Medicine
410-955-6738
* Currently and indefinitely
not accepting new patients

Rosalyn Walker Stewart
Johns Hopkins Outpatient Center
Department of Internal Medicine
410-955-3613

Milan Wister
4000 Old Court Road,
Suite 301, Pikesville
410-653-0000

Susan Wolfsthal
University of Maryland
Medical Center
Department of Medicine
410-328-5196
* Temporarily not accepting
new patients

Medical Genetics

Harry C. Dietz III
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Genetics Clinic Office
410-955-3071
* Temporarily not accepting
new patients

Carol L. Greene
University of Maryland
Medical Center
Pediatric Genetic Clinic
410-328-3335

Carole M. Meyers
Planned Parenthood
of Maryland
330 North Howard Street
410-788-4400
* Currently not accepting
new patients

Medical Oncology and
Hematology

Martin D. Abeloff
The Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins
410-955-8822
* Currently and indefinitely
not accepting new patients

Richard Ambinder
The Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins
410-955-8964

Deborah K. Armstrong
The Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins
410-955-8964

Robert A. Brodsky
The Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins
410-502-2546

Michael Carducci
The Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins
410-955-8964

Nancy E. Davidson
The Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins
410-955-8964

Russell DeLuca
Baltimore Washington Medical Center
Tate Cancer Center,
Glen Burnie
410-761-9896

Ross C. Donehower
The Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins
410-955-8838

Mario Eisenberger
The Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins
410-614-3511

David S. Ettinger
The Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins
410-955-8847

Arlene A. Forastiere
Johns Hopkins Hospital
410-955-8964

Ivana Gojo
University of Maryland
Medical Center
Marlene and Stewart
Greenebaum Cancer Center
410-328-2594

Steven D. Gore
The Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at
Johns Hopkins
410-955-8781

Stuart A. Grossman
The Sidney Kimmel
Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins
410-955-8837

Charles S. Hesdorffer
Johns Hopkins University
School of Medicine
Division of Hematology
410-955-8664

Meyer R. Heyman
University of Maryland
Medical Center
Marlene and Stewart Greenebaum Cancer Center
410-328-7450

Judith E. Karp
The Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins
410-502-7726

Flavio Kruter
555 South Center Street,
Westminster
410-751-6066

William P. McGuire III
Franklin Square Hospital Center
Division of Medical Oncology
443-777-7826

Roberto Pili
The Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins
410-955-8964

William Sharfman
Johna Hopkins at Green
Spring Station
10755 Falls Road, Lutherville
410-583-2970

David Andrew Van Echo
Harbor Hospital
HarborView Cancer Center
410-350-3386

Nephrology

Michael J. Choi
Johns Hopkins Outpatient Center
Division of Nephrology
410-955-0670
* Currently not accepting new patients

Neurological Surgery

Allan J. Belzberg
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Department of Neurosurgery
410-955-5810

Henry Brem
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Department of Neurosurgery
410-955-2248

James N. Campbell
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Department of Neurosurgery
410-955-3406

Ronald J. Cohen
Greater Baltimore Medical Center
410-321-7360

Ziya Gokaslan
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Department of Neurosurgery
410-955-4424
* Accepting new patients. Does not accept Medicare or BCBS insurance.

Judy Huang
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Department of Neurosurgery
410-502-5767

Frederick Lenz
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Department of Neurology
410-955-2257
William W. Maggio
University of Maryland Medical Center
Department of Neurosurgery
410-328-6034

Richard B. North
Sinai Hospital
The LifeBridge Health Brain and Spine Institute
410-601-1950

Alessandro Olivi
Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center
Department of Neurosurgery
410-550-0465

Alfredo Quinones
Johns Hopkins Bayview
Medical Center
Department of Neurosurgery
410-550-3367

Daniele Rigamonti
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Department of Neurosurgery
410-955-2259
* Accepting new patients on a case by case basis

John D. Rybock
Johns Hopkins University
School of Medicine
Department of Neurological Surgery
410-502-0463
* Currently not accepting new patients. Primarily reads X-rays.

J. Marc Simard
University of Maryland Medical Center
Department of Neurosurgery
410-328-6034

Rafael Tamargo
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Department of Neurosurgery
410-614-1533

Jon D. Weingart
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Department of Surgery
410-614-3052

Timothy Witham
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Department of Neurosurgery
410-955-4424

Jean-Paul Wolinsky
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Department of Neurosurgery
410-955-4424

Neurology

Eric M. Aldrich
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Department of Neurology
410-614-2381
* Hospitalist. Sees in-patients.

Elizabeth Barry
University of Maryland Medical Center
Department of Neurology
410-328-4323

Gregory K. Bergey
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Epilepsy Center
410-955-7338
* Accepting new patients with epilepsy or seizure disorders

Christopher T. Bever Jr.
University of Maryland
Medical Center
Department of Neurology
410-328-5858
* Temporarily not accepting
new patients

Peter Arthur Calabresi
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Multiple Sclerosis Center
410-614-1522
* Accepting new patients for
consultations. Available for
referrals and second opinions.

Vinay Chaudhry
Johns Hopkins Outpatient Center
Department of Neurology
410-955-9167

David R. Cornblath
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Department of Neurology
410-955-2229

Andrea Corse
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Department of Neurology
410-614-4278

Martha B. Denckla
Kennedy Krieger Institute
Department of Developmental Cognitive Neurology
443-923-9250

Paul S. Fishman
University of Maryland
Medical Center
Department of Neurology
410-328-4323

Barry Gordon
Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions
Department of Neurology
410-955-8531

John W. Griffin
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Department of Neurology
410-955-2227

Daniel Francis Hanley
Johns Hopkins University
Acute Care Neurology
410-614-6996

Douglas Kerr
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Department of Neurology
410-502-7099
* Available for consultations and second opinions

Steven Jay Kittner
University of Maryland Medical Center
Department of Neurology
410-328-4323

Gregory Lewis Krauss
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Department of Neurology
410-955-2822

Allan Krumholz
University of Maryland Medical Center
Department of Neurology
410-328-4323

John Joseph Laterra
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Department of Neurology
410-614-3853

Ronald P. Lesser
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Department of Neurology
410-955-1270

Justin C. McArthur
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Department of Neurology
410-955-3730

John W. McDonald
Kennedy Krieger Institute
Institute for Spinal Cord Injury
443-923-9414
* Accepting new patients by referral only and on a case by case basis

Beth B. Murinson
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Department of Neurology
410-614-1196

Avindra Nath
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Department of Neurology
443-287-4656

Bruce A. Rabin
Johns Hopkins at Green Spring Station
10755 Falls Road, Lutherville
410-616-7188

Stephen G. Reich
University of Maryland Medical Center
Department of Neurology
410-328-4323

Jeffrey D. Rothstein
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Department of Neurology
410-614-5972

Walter Royal III
University of Maryland Medical Center
Maryland Center for
Multiple Sclerosis
Department of Neurology
410-328-4323

Lisa M. Shulman
University of Maryland Medical Center
Maryland Parkinson’s Disease and Movement Disorders Center
Department of Neurology
410-328-4323
* Accepting new patients
with movement disorders and Parkinson’s Disease

Barney J. Stern
University of Maryland Medical Center
Department of Neurology
410-328-4323

William J. Weiner
University of Maryland Medical Center
Department of Neurology
410-328-4323
* Accepting new patients with movement disorders such as
Parkinson’s Disease, Huntington’s Disease, Tourette’s Tumor Disorders, Chorea Dystonia Moclonus, and Restless Leg Syndrome

Howard D. Weiss
2411 West Belvedere Avenue, Suite 202
410-367-7600
* Accepting new patients for
consultation and management
with a special focus on Parkinson’s Disease

Ursula Isolde Wesselmann
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Department of Neurology
410-614-4517

Robert J. Wityk
Johns Hopkins Outpatient Center
Department of Neurology
410-955-2228

David S. Zee
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Department of Neurology
410-955-3319

Neurology, Child

Thomas Crawford
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Division of Pediatric Neurology
410-614-5807

Michael Johnston
Kennedy Krieger Institute
Department of Neurology
443-923-9315
* Currently not accepting new patients. Available for consultations, referrals, and second opinions

Eric Kossoff
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Department of Neurology
410-614-6054

SakkuBai Naidu
Kennedy Krieger Institute
Department of Neurogenetics
443-923-2778

Gerald Raymond
Kennedy Krieger Institute
Department of Neurology
443-923-2750
* Accepting new patients on a case by case basis

Harvey S. Singer
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Division of Pediatric Neurology
410-955-7212

Eileen P. G. Vining
Johns Hopkins Outpatient Center
Department of Neurosurgery
410-955-9100

Nuclear Medicine

Richard L. Wahl
Johns Hopkins Outpatient Center
Division of Nuclear Medicine
410-614-3764

Dean F. Wong
Johns Hopkins Outpatient Center
Department of Radiology
410-955-8433

Harvey Ziessman
Johns Hopkins Outpatient Center
Division of Nuclear Medicine
410-614-3764

Obstetrics and Gynecology

Samuel Akman
OB/GYN Specialists of Maryland
1205 York Road, Suite 14,
Lutherville
410-832-5511

Lindsay S. Alger
University of Maryland Medical Center
Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology
410-328-5960

Jean Rene Anderson
Johns Hopkins at Green Spring Station
10755 Falls Road, Lutherville
410-583-2749

Thelma Seimaa Asare
OB/GYN Specialists of Maryland
1205 York Road, Suite 14,
Lutherville
410-832-5511

Milagros Atienza
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Department of Maternal-
Fetal Medicine
410-502-3200

Jon Joseph Bellantoni
520 Upper Chesapeake Drive, Suite 301, Bel Air
443-643-4300
* Unable to reach doctor to verify address and clinical activity

Jessica L. Bienstock
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Department of Maternal-Fetal Medicine
410-502-3200

Karin J. Blakemore
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Department of Obstetrics
and Gynecology
410-583-2749

Robert E. Bristow
Johns Hopkins Hospital
The Kelly Gynecologic
Oncology Service
410-955-8240

Anne E. Burke
Johns Hopkins Bayview
Medical Center
Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology
410-550-0335

Raymond Cox Jr.
St. Agnes Hospital
Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology
410-368-2626
* Primarily administrative

Jude Crino
Johns Hopkins at Green
Spring Station
10755 Falls Road, Lutherville
410-583-2888
* Accepting new obstetrics patients

Donovan Dietrick
Franklin Square Hospital Center
443-777-7831
* Accepting new gynecology patients

Richard Marcus Ellerkmann
Greater Baltimore Medical Center
Department of Gynecology
443-849-2767
* Accepting new gynecology patients

Mary Anne Facciolo
Capital Women’s Care
7505 Osler Drive,
Suite 402, Towson
410-339-7447
*Temporarily not accepting
new patients

Harold Edward Fox
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology
410-614-0178

Jairo E. Garcia
Johns Hopkins Hospital at
Green Spring Station
10755 Falls Road, Lutherville
410-583-2753
* Accepting new in vitro
fertilization patients

Rene R. Genadry
Johns Hopkins Hospital at
Green Spring Station
10755 Falls Road, Lutherville
410-583-2991

Robert L. Giuntoli II
Johns Hopkins Outpatient Center
Department of Gynecology and Obstetrics
410-955-6700
* Accepting new gynecologic
oncology patients

Ernest Graham
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Department of Maternal-Fetal Medicine
410-502-3200

Francis C. Grumbine
Greater Baltimore Medical Center
Department of Gynecologic Oncology
443-849-2765
* Accepting new gynecologic
oncology patients

Robert E. Gutman
Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center
Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology
410-550-0335

Victoria Handa
Johns Hopkins at Green Spring Station
10755 Falls Road, Lutherville
410-583-2749

Deborah Lyon Hebb
Greater Baltimore Medical Center
410-296-6090
* Accepting new obstetrics patients
Endrika L. Hinton
Greater Baltimore Medical Center
Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology
443-849-8707

Nancy Hueppchen
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Department of Maternal-
Fetal Medicine
410-502-3200
* Accepting new obstetrics patients

Harry W. Johnson Jr.
University of Maryland Medical Center
Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology
410-328-5960
* Accepting new urogynecology patients

Mary Jo Johnson
St. Joseph Medical Center
Towson
410-337-4480

Harvey H. Kasner
OB/GYN Specialists of Maryland
1205 York Road, Suite 14,
Lutherville
410-832-5511

Eugene Katz
Greater Baltimore Medical Center
Shady Grove Reproductive
Science Center
443-849-2484

Lisa A. Kolp
Johns Hopkins at Green Spring Station
10755 Falls Road, Lutherville
410-616-7140
* Accepting new infertility patients

Judy M. Lee
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Johns Hopkins Moore Clinic
410-955-1725

Michael S. Lifson
OB/GYN Specialists of Maryland
1205 York Road, Suite 14,
Lutherville
410-832-5511

Marc Lowen
Village Obstetrics and Gynecology
37 Walker Avenue, Suite 100, Pikesville
410-653-6500

Carole M. Meyers
Planned Parenthood of Maryland
330 North Howard Street
410-788-4400

Katherine Miller-Bass
Fertility Center of Maryland
110 West Road, Suite 102, Towson
410-296-6400

Hugh E. Mighty
University of Maryland
School of Medicine
Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology
410-328-5966

Lorraine Milio
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Department of Maternal-
Fetal Medicine
410-502-3200

Santiago L. Padilla
Fertility Center of Maryland
110 West Road, Suite 102,
Towson
410-296-6400

Robert F. Pegues
OB/GYN Specialists of Maryland
1205 York Road, Suite 14,
Lutherville
410-832-5511

Joel Pleeter
Village Obstetrics and Gynecology
37 Walker Avenue, Suite 100, Pikesville
410-653-6500

Carol Ritter
8415 Bellona Lane, Suite 213
410-296-2557

Neil B. Rosenshein
Mercy Medical Center
Weinberg Center for Women’s Health & Medicine at Mercy
410-332-9200

Judith Rossiter
St. Joseph Medical Center
Perinatal Center
410-337-4480
* Currently not accepting new patients. Available for consultations, referrals, and second opinions.

David B. Schwartz
Sinai Hospital
Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology
410-601-9711
* Primarily administrative

Frank R. Witter
Johns Hopkins Outpatient Center
Women’s Health Center
410-955-1421

Howard A. Zacur
Johns Hopkins at Green Spring Station
10755 Falls Road, Lutherville
410-583-2714

Ruthann T. Zern
Capital Women’s Care
7505 Osler Drive,
Suite 402, Towson
410-339-7447
*Temporarily not accepting
new patients

Ophthalmology

Donald A. Abrams
Sinai Hospital
Krieger Eye Institute
410-601-5700

Neil M. Bressler
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Wilmer Eye Institute
410-955-8342

Susan B. Bressler
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Wilmer Eye Institute
410-955-3648

Peter A. Campochiaro
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Wilmer Eye Institute
410-955-5106
* Primarily sees patients with retinal diseases by referral only. Will see self-referrals on a case
by case basis.

Roy S. Chuck
Johns Hopkins at Green Spring Station
10753 Falls Road, Lutherville
410-583-2802

James P. Dunn Jr.
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Wilmer Eye Institute
410-955-2966

Daniel Finkelstein
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Wilmer Eye Institute
410-955-3429

David Steven Friedman
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Wilmer Eye Institute
410-955-6082

Bert M. Glaser
National Retina Institute
901 Dulaney Valley Road,
Suite 200, Towson
410-337-4500

John D. Gottsch
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Wilmer Eye Institute
410-955-7928

David L. Guyton
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Wilmer Eye Institute
410-955-8314
* Accepting new children or adults needing Strabismus surgery due to misalignment and/or double vision

Julia A. Haller
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Wilmer Eye Institute
410-955-3518

James T. Handa
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Wilmer Eye Institute
410-955-3518
* Accepting new patients
with retinal diseases and
intraocular tumors

Nicholas T. Iliff
Johns Hopkins Bayview
Medical Center
Wilmer Eye Institute
410-550-9427
* Accepting new patients for
oculoplastic and orbital surgery

Henry D. Jampel
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Wilmer Eye Institute
410-955-6082
*Temporarily not accepting
new patients

Allan D. Jensen
200 East 33rd Street,
Suite 426
410-235-1133

Shalom E. Kelman
1777 Reisterstown Road,
Suite 234
410-580-1800

Irene H. Maumenee
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Wilmer Eye Institute
410-955-5214
* Primarily works in research

Peter J. McDonnell III
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Wilmer Eye Institute
443-287-1511

Neil R. Miller
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Wilmer Eye Institute
410-955-8679

Harry A. Quigley
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Wilmer Eye Institute
410-955-6052

Alan Lee Robin
Mid-Atlantic Glaucoma Experts
6115 Falls Road, Suite 333
410-377-2422
Oliver D. Schein
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Wilmer Eye Institute
410-955-7677

Sharon Solomon
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Wilmer Eye Institute
410-614-6908

Walter J. Stark
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Wilmer Eye Institute
410-955-5490

John T. Thompson
Retina Specialists
6569 N. Charles Street, Physician’s Pavilion West, Suite 605, Towson
410-296-9700

Jennifer Elizabeth Thorne
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Department of Ophthalmology
410-955-2966

Robert S. Weinberg
Johns Hopkins Bayview
Medical Center
Department of Ophthalmology
410-550-3000

C. P. Wilkinson
Greater Baltimore Medical Center
Department of Ophthalmology
443-849-2196

Orthopaedic Surgery

Paul Asdourian
Union Memorial Hospital
Greater Chesapeake Orthopaedic Associates
410-554-2867

Robert J. Brumback
Union Memorial Hospital
Greater Chesapeake
Orthopaedic Associates
410-554-6645

Timothy P. Codd
Orthopaedic Associates
8322 Bellona Avenue,
Suite 100, Towson
410-337-7900

Carol E. Copeland
University of Maryland
Medical Center
Department of Orthopaedics
410-328-6280
* Primarily sees patients in the Trauma Center. Will see referral patients on a case by case basis.

Andy Cosgarea
Johns Hopkins at Green Spring Station
10755 Falls Road, Lutherville
410-583-2850

Leigh Ann Curl
Harborview Sports Medicine and Shoulder Surgery
2900 South Hanover Street
410-350-8336

Randy F. Davis
Mid-Atlantic Spine and Orthopaedics
305 Hospital Drive, Suite 303, Glen Burnie
410-553-8290

Frank R. Ebert
Union Memorial Hospital
Greater Chesapeake
Orthopaedic Associates
410-554-2850
* Accepting new patients for
joint replacement

Frank Frassica
Johns Hopkins Outpatient Center
Department of Orthopaedic Surgery
410-955-9300
* Currently and indefinitely not
accepting new patients

David S. Hungerford
Good Samaritan Hospital of Maryland
Department of Orthopaedics
410-532-4732

Leslie Matthews
Union Memorial Hospital
Department of Orthopaedic Surgery
410-554-2865

Edward G. McFarland
Johns Hopkins at Green
Spring Station
10755 Falls Road, Lutherville
410-583-2850

Mark S. Myerson
Mercy Medical Center
Institute for Foot and Ankle
Reconstruction
410-659-2800

Jason Nascone
University of Maryland
Medical Center
Department of Orthopaedics
410-326-6280
* Accepting new patients. Practice is limited to acute fracture management, post traumatic re-construction, and bone infections.

Vincent D. Pellegrini Jr.
University of Maryland
Medical Center
Department of Orthopaedics
410-328-8919
* Accepting new patients with diagnoses of hip, knee, and hand/upper extremity arthritis

Steve Alan Petersen
Johns Hopkins at Green Spring Station
10755 Falls Road, Lutherville
410-847-3517

Andrew N. Pollak
University of Maryland Medical Center
R Adams Cowley Shock
Trauma Center
410-448-6400

Lew Schon
Union Memorial Hospital
Greater Chesapeake Orthopaedic Associates
410-554-2891

Marcus Sciadini
University of Maryland
Medical Center
R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center
410-448-6400

Clifford H. Turen
University of Maryland Medical Center
R Adams Cowley Shock
Trauma Center
410-448-6400

Otolaryngology

Patrick Byrne
Johns Hopkins Outpatient Center
Department of Otolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery
410-955-4985

John P. Carey
Johns Hopkins Outpatient Center
Department of Otolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery
410-955-7381

Paul W. Flint
Johns Hopkins Outpatient Center
Department of Otolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery
410-955-1080

Howard Wayne Francis
Johns Hopkins University
Department of Otolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery
410-955-1686

Michael J. Holliday
Johns Hopkins Outpatient Center
Department of Otolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery
410-955-3492

Wayne Koch
Johns Hopkins Outpatient Center
Department of Otolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery
410-955-4906

Lloyd Minor
Johns Hopkins Outpatient Center
Department of Otolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery
410-955-3403

John K. Niparko
Johns Hopkins Outpatient Center
Division of Otology, Neurotology and Skull Base Surgery
410-955-1686

Robert A. Ord
University of Maryland Medical Center
Division of Oral-Maxillofacial Surgery
410-706-6195

Ralph P. Tufano
Johns Hopkins Outpatient Center
Department of Otolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery
410-955-3628

Pathology

Frederic B. Askin
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Department of Surgical Pathology
410-955-8116
* Unable to reach doctor to verify address and clinical activity

Michael Borowitz
The Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins
410-614-2889
* Currently not accepting new patients. Available for second opinions of pathology slides

Peter C. Burger
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Department of Pathology
410-955-8378

Jonathan I. Epstein
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Medical Institute
Department of Pathology
410-955-3580

Pediatric Allergy and Immunology

Kenneth C. Schuberth
The Maryland Pediatric Group
10807 Falls Road, Suite 200, Lutherville
410-321-9393

Robert A. Wood
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Division of Pediatric Allergy
and Immunology
410-955-5883
Pediatric and Adolescent Gynecology

Endrika L. Hinton
Greater Baltimore Medical Center
Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology
443-849-8707

Meredith Loveless
Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center
Children’s Medical Practice
410-550-4605

Pediatric Anesthesiology

Ken M. Brady
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Department of Pediatric
Anesthesiology
410-955-2393

Eugenie Heitmiller
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Department of
Anesthesiology and
Critical Care Medicine
410-614-1162

David Gregory Nichols
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Department of Pediatric
Anesthesiology
410-955-8401

Anne M. Savarese
University of Maryland Medical Center
Department of Anesthesiology
410-328-6120

Jamie Schwartz
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Department of Pediatric
Anesthesiology
410-955-2393

Donald Shaffner
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Department of Pediatric
Anesthesiology
410-955-6412

Myron Yaster
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Division of Pediatric Anesthesia and Critical Care Medicine
410-955-2393

Aaron L. Zuckerberg
Sinai Hospital
410-601-9193

Pediatric Cardiac Surgery

Duke E. Cameron
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Department of Surgery
410-955-2698
Pediatric Cardiology

Joel I. Brenner
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Department of Pediatric
Cardiology
410-955-9714

Richard E. Ringel
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Department of Pediatric
Cardiology
410-955-9714

Philip Spevak
Johns Hopkins Children’s Center
Division of Pediatric Cardiology
410-955-5987
* Primarily sees in-patients

Pediatric Critical Care

Ivor Berkowitz
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Department of Pediatric
Anesthesiology
410-955-2393

James Fackler
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Department of Anesthesiology
and Critical Care Medicine
410-955-7610

Leah Zena Harris
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Department of Anesthesiology
410-955-2393

Elizabeth Hunt
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Pediatric Critical Care
410-955-2393

David Gregory Nichols
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Department of Pediatric
Anesthesiology
410-955-8401

Lewis Romer
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Department of Pediatrics
410-955-9444

Donald Shaffner
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Department of Pediatric
Anesthesiology
410-955-6412

Pediatric Dermatology

Bernard Alan Cohen
Johns Hopkins University
School of Medicine
Division of Pediatric Dermatology
410-955-2049
Pediatric Endocrinology

Karen M. Armour
Sinai Hospital
Division of Pediatric Endocrinology
410-601-8331

David William Cooke
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Division of Pediatric Endocrinology
410-955-6463

Debra R. Counts
University of Maryland
Medical Center
Division of Pediatric Endocrinology
410-328-3410
* Accepting new patients on a case by case basis

Emily Germain-Lee
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Division of Pediatric Endocrinology
410-955-6463

Judith V. McLaughlin
Sinai Hospital
Division of Pediatric Endocrinology
410-601-8331

Leslie P. Plotnick
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Division of Pediatric Endocrinology
410-614-2359

Sally Radovick
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Division of Pediatric Endocrinology
410-955-6463

Barry J. Reiner
1001 Pine Heights Avenue,
Suite 202
410-646-4009

Pediatric Gastroenterology

Carmelo Cuffari
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Department of Pediatric
Gastroenterology
410-955-8769

Steven J. Czinn
University of Maryland
Medical Center
Department of Pediatrics
410-328-6777

Pediatric Hematology-Oncology

Robert John Arceci
The Sidney Kimmel
Comprehensive
Cancer Center
at Johns Hopkins
410-502-7519

James F. Casella
Johns Hopkins University
School of Medicine
Division of Pediatric
Hematology
410-955-6132

George J. Dover
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Department of Pediatrics
410-955-6132
* Currently not accepting
new patients

Donald Small
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Department of Pediatric
Oncology
410-955-8817

Pediatric Infectious Disease

Neal A. Halsey
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Department of Pediatrics
410-614-3917

Julia A. McMillan
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Department of Pediatrics
410-955-2727
* Primarily sees in-patients

Robert Harry Yolken
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Department of Pediatrics
410-614-0004
* Primarily works in research

Pediatric Metabolic Diseases

Carol L. Greene
University of Maryland
Medical Center
Pediatric Genetic Clinic
410-328-3335

Richard I. Kelley
Kennedy Krieger Institute
Department of Neurogenetics
443-923-2783

David Valle
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Department of Pediatric
Metabolic Diseases
410-955-4260

Pediatric Nephrology

Jeffrey J. Fadrowski
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Department of Nephrology
410-955-2467

Barbara A. Fivush
Johns Hopkins Outpatient Center
Division of Pediatric Nephrology
410-955-2467
*Temporarily not accepting
new patients. Available for
referrals, consultations, and
second opinions.

Susan L. Furth
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Division of Pediatric Nephrology
410-955-2467
* Attending physician

Susan R. Mendley
University of Maryland
Medical Center
Division of Pediatric Nephrology
410-328-5303

Alicia M. Neu
Johns Hopkins University
School of Medicine
Division of Pediatric Nephrology
410-955-2467

Pediatric Neurological Surgery

Benjamin S. Carson
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Department of Pediatric
Neurosurgery
410-955-7888

George Jallo
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Department of Neurosurgery
410-955-7851

Pediatric Ophthalmology

David L. Guyton
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Wilmer Eye Institute
410-955-8314

Michael X. Repka
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Wilmer Eye Institute
410-955-8314

Pediatric Orthopaedic Surgery

Michael Ain
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Department of Orthopaedic Surgery
410-955-3135

Paul Sponseller
Johns Hopkins Outpatient Center
Department of Orthopaedic Surgery
410-955-3136

Pediatric Otolaryngology

Charles J. Limb
Johns Hopkins Outpatient Center
Department of Otolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery
410-502-4269
David E. Tunkel
Johns Hopkins Outpatient Center
Department of Otolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery
410-955-1559

Pediatric Pain Management

Myron Yaster
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Division of Pediatric
Anesthesia and Critical
Care Medicine
410-955-2393

Pediatric Physical Medicine and Rehab

James Rodney Christensen
Kennedy Krieger Institute
Pediatric Rehabilitation
443-923-9440

Frank S. Pidcock
Kennedy Krieger Institute
Pediatric Rehabilitation
443-923-9440

Pediatric Plastic Surgery

Craig A. Vander Kolk
Associate Director
Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery at Mercy Medical Center
6th Floor
Weinberg Center
227 St. Paul Place
410-332-9700

Pediatric Pulmonology

Preston W. Campbell III
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Division of Pediatric Pulmonology
410-955-2795
* Accepting new patients on a case by case basis

Sharon McGrath-Morrow
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Division of Pediatric Pulmonology
410-955-2035

Peter J. Mogayzel Jr.
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Cystic Fibrosis Center
410-955-2035

Shruti Maka Paranjape
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Cystic Fibrosis Center
410-955-2795

Beryl J. Rosenstein
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Department of Pediatric Specialties
410-955-2795

Laura M. Sterni
Mt. Washington
Pediatric Hospital
Dept. of Pediatric Pulmonology
410-955-2035

Pamela L. Zeitlin
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Division of Pediatric Pulmonology
410-955-2035

Pediatric Specialist/Abused Children

Howard Dubowitz
University of Maryland Medical Center
Center for Child Protection
410-706-6144

Pediatric Specialist/Adolescent and Young Adult Medicine

Hoover Adger Jr.
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Department of Adolescent and Young Adult Medicine
410-955-2910

Alain Joffe
Johns Hopkins University
Student Health and Wellness Center
410-516-8270
* Currently and indefinitely not accepting new patients. Practice limited to students enrolled at the Johns Hopkins University schools of arts, sciences, and engineering.

Pediatric Specialist/Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine

Marilee Allen
Kennedy Krieger Institute
NICU Developmental Clinic
443-923-2600
* Accepting new patients for neurodevelopmental consultations. Does not provide primary pediatric care.

Susan Aucott
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Department of Neonatology
410-955-5259
* Primarily sees patients in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at the hospital

Alan Bedrick
Franklin Square Hospital Center
Section of Neonatology
443-777-7748
* Primarily sees patients in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at the hospital

Renee Fox
University of Maryland Medical Center
Department of Pediatrics and Neonatology
410-328-6003

Catherine H. Jones
Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center
Department of Neonatology
410-550-4224
* Primarily sees patients in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at the hospital

Edward E. Lawson
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Division of Neonatology
410-955-5259
* Accepting new patients.
Practice limited to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. Available for consultations.

Lawrence M. Nogee
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Division of Neonatology
410-955-5259

Siew-Jyu Wong
St. Agnes Hospital
Department of Pediatrics
410-368-2504
* Primarily sees in-patients

Pediatric Surgery

Paul M. Colombani
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Department of Pediatric Surgery
410-955-2717

Pediatric Urology

John P. Gearhart
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Brady Urological Institute
410-955-5358

Ranjiv Mathews
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Department of Urology
410-955-3693

Pediatrics (General)

Paul Bodnar
Mainstreet Pediatrics
515 Fairmount Avenue, Suite 200, Towson
410-494-1369

Lauren Bogue
10755 Falls Road, Suite 260, Lutherville
410-583-2955
* Temporarily not accepting
new patients

Ralph Brown
2435 West Belvedere Avenue, Suite 52
410-578-8301
* Temporarily not accepting
new patients

Timothy F. Doran
Greater Baltimore Medical Center
Department of Pediatrics
443-849-6444
* Currently not accepting new patients

James E. Fragetta
The Maryland Pediatric Group
10807 Falls Road, Suite 200, Lutherville
410-321-9393

Dennis L. Headings
The Maryland Pediatric Group
10807 Falls Road, Suite 200, Lutherville
410-321-9393
* Accepting new patients on
a case by case basis

Alain Joffe
Johns Hopkins University
Student Health and Wellness Center
410-516-8270
* Currently and indefinitely not accepting new patients. Practice limited to students enrolled at the Johns Hopkins University schools of arts, sciences, and engineering.

Dawan V. King
Family Health Centers of Baltimore
315 North Calvert Street
410-500-5500

Alan M. Lake
The Maryland Pediatric Group
10807 Falls Road, Suite 200, Lutherville
410-321-9393

Daniel J. Levy
Child and Teen Wellness Center
10085 Red Run Boulevard,
Suite 307, Owings Mills
410-363-1843
* Currently not accepting
new patients

Michael W. May
9501 Old Annapolis Road, Suite 101, Ellicott City
410-992-9339

Rose M. Mulaikal
Mainstreet Pediatrics
515 Fairmount Avenue,
Suite 200, Towson
410-494-1369

Carole Anne Parnes
9501 Old Annapolis Road,
Suite 101, Ellicott City
410-992-9339

Peter C. Rowe
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Department of Pediatrics
410-955-9229

Kenneth C. Schuberth
The Maryland Pediatric Group
10807 Falls Road, Suite 200, Lutherville
410-321-9393

Michael E. Sherlock
1205 York Road, Suite 27,
Lutherville
410-321-8822

Jonathan Surell
Mainstreet Pediatrics
515 Fairmount Avenue,
Suite 200, Towson
410-494-1369

Kenneth Tellerman
222 West Cold Spring Lane
410-243-8632

Physical Medicine and
Rehabilitation

James Rodney Christensen
Kennedy Krieger Institute
Pediatric Rehabilitation
443-923-9440

Barbara J. de Lateur
Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center
Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation
410-502-2272

R. Samuel Mayer
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation
410-614-4030

Jeffrey B. Palmer
Johns Hopkins Hospital
410-614-4030

Frank S. Pidcock
Kennedy Krieger Institute
Pediatric Rehabilitation
443-923-9440

David Andrew Pitts
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Department of Physical
Medicine and Rehabilitation
410-614-4030

Leon Reinstein
Sinai Hospital
Department of
Rehabilitation Medicine
410-601-5597

Cristina Sadowsky
Kennedy Krieger Institute
443-923-9230
Kenneth Silver
Good Samaritan Hospital
Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation
410-532-4700

Richard D. Zorowitz
Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center
Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation
410-550-5299

Plastic Surgery

William A. Crawley
Greater Baltimore Medical Center
Department of Plastic Surgery
410-494-1450

A. Lee Dellon
Dellon Institute for Peripheral
Nerve Surgery
3333 North Calvert Street,
Suite 370
410-467-5400
* Accepting new self-pay patients. Does not accept insurance

Paul N. Manson
Johns Hopkins Outpatient Center
Division of Plastic Surgery
410-955-9469

Stephen M. Milner
Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center
Division of Plastic Surgery
410-550-0886

Chi-Tsung Su
1629 York Road, Suite A,
Lutherville
410-321-1400

Craig A. Vander Kolk
Johns Hopkins Outpatient Center
Department of Plastic and
Reconstructive Surgery
410-955-2136

Psychiatry

Jill Berkowitz
2107 Burdock Road
410-653-3468

Fred S. Berlin
104 East Biddle Street
410-539-1661

John Boronow
Sheppard Pratt Health System
Department of Psychiatry
410-938-4306
* Currently not accepting
new patients

William T. Carpenter Jr.
Maryland Psychiatric Research Center
Spring Grove Hospital Center
410-402-7101
* Primarily works in research

J. Raymond DePaulo Jr.
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Department of Psychiatry
and Behavioral Sciences
410-955-3130

Lisa Dixon
University of Maryland Medical Center
Department of Psychiatry
410-706-3211
* Temporarily not accepting
new patients

Jeffrey S. Janofsky
30 East Padonia Road,
Suite 206, Timonium
410-560-2136

Geetha Jayaram
Johns Hopkins Hospital
410-955-2237

Deirdre M. Johnston
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Neuropsychiatry and Memory Group
410-955-6158

Anthony F. Lehman
University of Maryland Medical Center
Department of Psychiatry
410-328-6735
* Currently and indefinitely not accepting new patients

Joseph G. Liberto
VA Maryland Health Care System
Mental Health Clinical Center
410-605-7368
* Temporarily not accepting
new patients

John R. Lion
Two Village Square, Suite 217
410-433-6333

John R. Lipsey
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Department of Psychiatry
and Behavioral Sciences
410-955-7162
* Currently and indefinitely not accepting new patients

Richard J. Loewenstein
Sheppard Pratt Health System
410-938-5070
* Temporarily not accepting new patients. Available for consultations and second opinions

Constantine George
Lyketsos
Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center
Department of Psychiatry
and Behavioral Sciences
410-550-0062

David Neubauer
Johns Hopkins Bayview
Medical Center
Department of Psychiatry
and Behavioral Sciences
410-550-0066
* Unable to reach doctor to verify clinical address and activity

Stephen A. Polakoff
413 South Camp Meade Road, Linthicum Heights
410-859-3111

Peter Vincent Rabins
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Department of Geriatric Psychiatry
410-955-6736

Paul E. Roberts
711 West 40th Street
410-467-8383

Robert Roca
Sheppard and Enoch
Pratt Hospital
410-938-4320
* Currently not accepting
new patients

Neil Brian Sandson
Sheppard and Enoch Pratt Hospital
410-938-3000
* Available for psychopharmacology consultations to in-patients and hospital day patients

John Andrew Talbott
University of Maryland
Medical Center
Department of Psychiatry
410-328-2132

Psychiatry/Child and Adolescent Psychiatry

David B. Pruitt
University of Maryland Medical Center
Division of Child and
Adolescent Psychiatry
410-328-1111

V. Susan Villani
Kennedy Krieger Institute
School Programs
443-923-4507
* Currently not accepting new patients. Primarily sees children attending school.

Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine

Michael Patrick Boyle
Johns Hopkins
Outpatient Center
Department of Pulmonary and
Critical Care Medicine
410-502-7044
* Primarily sees patients with
cystic fibrosis

Edward James Britt
University of Maryland
Medical Center
Pulmonary and Critical
Care Medicine
410-706-2171

Nancy A. Collop
Johns Hopkins University
School of Medicine
Division of Pulmonary and
Critical Care Medicine
443-287-3313

Henry Fessler
Johns Hopkins University
School of Medicine
Division of Pulmonary and
Critical Care Medicine
410-955-3467

Jonathan B. Orens
Johns Hopkins University
School of Medicine
Division of Pulmonary and
Critical Care Medicine
410-955-3468
* Primarily sees in-patients in the final stage of lung diseases for lung transplantation. Will see
patients with general pulmonary problems, advanced lung diseases including interstitial lung disease, pulmonary hypertension, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

Albert J. Polito
Mercy Medical Center
Lung Center
410-332-9732

Salim Rizk
Union Memorial Hospital
Department of Pulmonology
410-467-4470

Philip L. Smith II
Johns Hopkins Bayview
Care Center
Asthma and Allergy Center
410-550-0545

Peter Terry
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Division of Pulmonary and
Critical Care Medicine
410-955-3467

Ko-Pen Wang
Harbor Hospital
Chest Diagnostic Center
410-354-6330

Robert A. Wise
Johns Hopkins Bayview Care Center
Asthma and Allergy Center
410-550-5864

Pamela L. Zeitlin
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Division of Pediatric Pulmonary
410-955-2035

Theodore L. DeWeese
The Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins
Department of Radiation Oncology
410-955-7068

William Regine
University of Maryland Medical Center
Department of Radiation Oncology
410-328-6080

Mohan Suntha
University of Maryland Medical Center
Department of Radiation Oncology
410-328-6080

Radiology

Wendie Berg
American Radiology Services
10755 Falls Road, Suite 440, Lutherville
410-583-2706
* Specializes in breast imaging

Elliot K. Fishman
Johns Hopkins Outpatient Center
Department of Radiology
410-955-5173

Nagi Khouri
Johns Hopkins Outpatient Center
Avon Breast Center
410-955-7095

Jonathan Lewin
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Department of Radiology
410-955-5678

Patrick C. Malloy
University of Maryland Medical Center
Division of Vascular and
Interventional Radiology
410-328-5112

Reuben S. Mezrich
University of Maryland Medical Center
Department of Diagnostic Radiology
410-328-0152

Kieran P. Murphy
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Department of Radiology
410-955-8525

Robert D. Pugatch
University of Maryland Medical Center
Department of Diagnostic Radiology
410-328-0152

Philip Anthony Templeton
Templeton Radiology
1302 Upper Glencoe Road, Sparks
410-472-3372

Charles S. White
University of Maryland Medical Center
Department of Diagnostic Radiology
410-328-0152

David M. Yousem
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Department of Radiology
410-955-2685

Gregg Zoarski
University of Maryland Medical Center
Division of Neuroradiology
410-328-5052

Rheumatology

Alan Baer
Good Samaritan Hospital of Maryland
Division of Rheumatology
410-532-4646

David B. Hellmann
Johns Hopkins Bayview Care Center
Asthma and Allergy Center
410-550-6825
* Currently and indefinitely not accepting new patients

Marc C. Hochberg
University of Maryland Medical Center
Division of Rheumatology
410-406-6474
* Temporarily not accepting new patients

Michelle A. Petri
Johns Hopkins University
School of Medicine
Department of Rheumatology
410-955-9114

Fredrick M. Wigley
Johns Hopkins Bayview Care Center
Asthma and Allergy Center
410-550-7715

Sleep Medicine

Nancy A. Collop
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Division of Pulmonary and
Critical Care Medicine
443-287-3313

David Neubauer
Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center
Department of Psychiatry
and Behavioral Sciences
410-550-0066

Surgery

Dana K. Andersen
Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center
Department of Surgery
410-550-5900

William A. Baumgartner
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Division of Cardiac Surgery
410-955-5248

Edward E. Cornwell
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Department of Surgery
410-955-2244

Frederic E. Eckhauser
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Department of Surgery
410-502-0932

Julie A. Freischlag
Johns Hopkins University
School of Medicine
Department of Surgery
443-287-3497

Richard F. Heitmiller II
Union Memorial Hospital
Department of Surgery
410-554-2063

Adrian Park
University of Maryland
Medical Center
Department of Surgery
410-328-6442

Bruce A. Perler
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Division of Vascular Surgery
410-955-2618

Michael Schultz
St. Joseph Medical Center
Department of Surgery
410-427-5510

Martha A. Zeiger
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Division of Endocrinology and Oncologic Surgery
410-614-1197

Surgical Oncology

Charles M. Balch
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Department of Surgery
410-502-5977

Michael Choti
The Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins
410-955-7113

Thoracic Surgery

William A. Baumgartner
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Department of Surgery
410-955-5248

John Conte
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Division of Cardiac Surgery
410-955-1753

Bartley P. Griffith
University of Maryland Medical Center
Division of Cardiac Surgery
410-328-5842

Richard F. Heitmiller II
Union Memorial Hospital
Department of Surgery
410-554-2063

Mark J. Krasna
St. Joseph Medical Center
Division of Thoracic Surgery
410-427-2220

Richard N. Pierson III
University of Maryland Medical Center
Division of Cardiac Surgery
410-328-5842
* Accepting new transplant patients

Stephen Clyde Yang
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Division of Thoracic Surgery
410-614-3891

Urology

Richard B. Alexander
University of Maryland Medical Center
Department of Urology
410-328-5109

H. Ballentine Carter
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Brady Urological Institute
410-955-0351

Jacek L. Mostwin
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Brady Urological Institute
410-955-4461

Alan W. Partin
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Brady Urological Institute
410-614-4876

Patrick C. Walsh
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Brady Urological Institute
410-955-6100
* Accepting new male patients with prostate cancer

Six months ago, a woman in her late 40’s walked into Dr. Navin Singh’s office requesting a thigh lift. The plastic surgeon, director of breast reconstruction and assistant professor of plastic surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, had already performed a breast augmentation with lift and a tummy tuck on the patient—and Singh’s partner had performed a facelift, eyelid surgery, and rhinoplasty on her, as well—but she wanted more.

The procedure would leave a sizeable scar, Singh warned her, but she remained eager to pursue it. The surgeon got the feeling that the woman was “seeking the thrill” of the procedure, and “just didn’t have a reasonable expectation of what a thigh lift involved.” She was the classic plastic surgery addict, out for body-altering surgery for all the wrong reasons, he explains. So he turned her down.
“She became irate,” he recalls. “Typically the answers we provide are, ‘I don’t think I’m the right surgeon for you.’ It’s the classic ‘It’s not you, it’s me.'”
Another patient, a young man in his late 20’s who was “well into the double digits” of facial procedures, approached Singh for eyelid surgery. Reconstructive rhinoplasty earlier in his life was his “gateway” procedure—a hallmark for those dependent on plastic surgery—to an alarming roster of aesthetic surgeries that, one by one, wouldn’t signify an issue, but “in aggregate, symbolized to me a problem,” he says.
“It starts with [the gateway procedure] and creeps onto the rest of their body,” he says. “They’re insatiable.”
Again, Singh refused to do the surgery.
“I told him honestly that I thought he was starting to look too synthetic and that I thought he needed to be evaluated by a mental health professional,” he says. “Oftentimes, a young plastic surgeon will just do it and validate it to themselves by saying, ‘If I don’t do it, someone else will.’ But you never want to be the last person to have operated on a person like that.”
But sometimes, “no” just doesn’t cut it, and patients will try to convince a plastic surgeon to perform the operation anyway—something that confounds Singh.
“Imagine you’ve got a car and the mechanic says, ‘I’m not really the right guy for this.’ Would you really leave him your car?” he asks. “But yet, when it’s your body . . . it’s amazing how much they’ll negotiate with you to get you to do something.”

Cosmetic surgeon Dr. Hema Sundaram has also seen her share of “over-enhanced” patients, but the 46-year-old woman who recently walked into her office definitely took her by surprise.
The woman had already had a laundry list of facial procedures—various implants, lifts, and fillers—but it was her lips that shocked the doctor.
“They were grossly over-enhanced,” Sundaram recounts. “She came to me because she wanted more.”
“I just want them totally pumped up,” the woman told her. “As big as they can be.”
Sundaram, who has offices in Rockville and Fairfax, Virginia and is the author of the book Face Value: The Truth About Beauty—and a Guilt-Free Guide to Finding It, explained to the prospective patient that her look had surpassed natural—and that she refused to inject her lips with anything else until they went down to a normal size.
“To me, the best cosmetic surgery is undetectable, and her lips absolutely walked in the room before she did,” the surgeon says. “Chances are, she went to another cosmetic surgeon and got what she wanted.”

The experience of turning someone away who has gone overboard with plastic and cosmetic surgery is a familiar one to doctors like Singh and Sundaram. With faster recovery times and a seemingly endless array of procedures to modify just about any body part that needs “fixing,” plastic surgery is more popular than ever in America. According to the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery (ASAPS), there were nearly 11.5 million surgical and nonsurgical procedures in the United States in 2006 alone, including 4.1 million injections of Botox—a neurotoxin used to temporarily smooth facial lines that can even be available at some certified day spas, or “medi-spas.” All that nipping, tucking, and injecting equals big business; Americans shelled out nearly $12.2 billion on cosmetic surgery last year, ASAPS reports. Of course, our celebrity culture is driving this phenomenon. More and more celebs are being “outed” as plastic surgery indulgers—and we want to look as great, as young, as nipped and tucked, as they do.
It’s not only women going under the knife, either. Since 1997, nonsurgical cosmetic procedures among men have increased a whopping 722 percent, and men accounted for nearly 1 million cosmetic procedures in 2006 (liposuction was the most popular procedure for men, followed by rhinoplasty, eyelid surgery, breast reduction to treat enlarged male breasts, and facelift).
As lips and breasts continue to swell, faces mysteriously tighten, and celebrities quietly remodel their entire bodies, it doesn’t come as a surprise that people often go overboard with plastic surgery. When it comes to a plastic surgery “addiction,” though, one’s friends and neighbors don’t usually come to mind. Instead, we think of the freakish Michael Jackson, or “Lion Queen” socialite Jocelyn Wildenstein, or self-proclaimed plastic-surgery expert Cindy Jackson (commonly known as the “Human Barbie”), not the person standing behind you at the supermarket.
But everyday people addicted to plastic surgery? The answer is yes, according to area plastic and cosmetic surgeons.

Although he admits it is truly rare, Dr. Adam Basner—division head of plastic surgery at Sinai Hospital with a private practice in Lutherville—does turn patients away who seem like candidates for plastic surgery addiction.
“In a very, very small percentage of patients I’ll say, ‘I don’t think I can help you,'” he explains of a surgery-seeker who has unrealistic expectations of what cosmetic procedures can achieve, a warning sign of an addiction to—or at least a dependence on—plastic surgery. If Basner is unsure about a cosmetic surgery candidate, he may recommend that a psychologist be involved to determine whether the patient has reasonable expectations.
A person who can’t be convinced that surgery might be futile, or who comes in requesting to look like someone else, definitely rings a warning bell in the minds of most plastic surgeons.
“As a plastic surgeon, you have to be able to recognize what can be fixed,” adds Dr. Michael Cohen of the Towson-based Cosmetic Surgery Center of Maryland. As for turning away a patient? “It’s a service that you owe to the patient. It doesn’t do you any good, it doesn’t do the patient any good, and it’s not worth the money.”
But what about Hollywood’s portrayal (perpetuated through shows like Nip/Tuck) that plastic surgeons are strictly in it for the narcissism and the money?

“I do believe that most plastic surgeons actually have a great deal of care and concern for their patients,” Basner says.
Singh agrees, but admits that true “addicts” find ways to manipulate some surgeons into performing procedures they’re hesitant about. “They will play into our own narcissism,” by showering them with compliments about their work and reputation, he says. “Females will also play the ‘damsel in distress,'” role, Singh continues. “‘I’ve been butchered,'” the women will say. “‘I should have come to you in the first place.'”
“As men, we’re trained to jump at that,” Singh admits. “Patients themselves can be very good psychological manipulators.”

For some patients, no amount of surgery will ever satiate their needs. Fifteen percent of patients seeking plastic surgery have what is called body dismorphic disorder (BDD), Sundaram says, an obsessive-compulsive disorder that creates a distorted self image, usually when there’s nothing noticeably wrong to outsiders.
“By and large, [those with BDD] don’t feel better when they get the surgeries . . . or if they do, they pretty much switch to another part of the body,” explains Dr. Christopher Welsh, addiction psychiatrist and assistant professor at the University of Maryland Medical Center. He is careful to distinguish between people with BDD and those simply obsessed with plastic surgery. “Body dismorphic disorder is deeper-rooted psychologically. It’s a fixed feeling that something is wrong,” versus someone who is preoccupied with looking younger, Welsh says. “With body dismorphic disorder, you act like there’s something wrong with you. . . . Because your nose is ‘too big,’ it just destroys your life. It’s qualitatively different than someone who just wants to look younger.”
In the case of BDD, “it’s a need, not a choice,” Sundaram says. Similar to an alcohol or drug addiction, “your whole life revolves around it,” and those suffering from BDD may go far into debt to finance their extensive procedures.
BDD aside, the need to look younger—or have bigger breasts, smaller thighs, a streamlined nose, or more enhanced muscles (for men)—can indeed take over someone’s life if they have the means for the often costly procedures.

This is not only a danger for adults, but for children, too, says Dr. Shreya Patel Hessler, a Bel Air psychologist specializing in children and adolescents. She is now seeing girls as young as 7 with body image issues, already mapping out future plastic surgery procedures and counting calories. She sees teenagers who request cosmetic surgery as graduation gifts. Hessler has also counseled three young male patients with eating disorders within the past year, one of whom wanted pectoral implants to make his chest more defined. “Without appropriate intervention, [their self-esteem issues] could get worse,” she warns.
The psychologist recommends that parents listen closely to what their children are saying about their appearance, making special note of whom their children are comparing themselves to, how they respond to compliments on their physical appearance, and if they make self-deprecating statements.
But parents are often to blame themselves, she states, giving in to their children’s desires to have plastic surgery because they are so desperate for them to feel not only good about themselves, but accepted amongst their peers. Sometimes a procedure such as rhinoplasty can truly boost an adolescent’s self-esteem, Hessler says, but if your child has a “laundry list” of cosmetic procedures he or she wants to have done, it’s time to worry.

Even with these concerns, plastic surgery still has its cheerleaders. Christine Schwab, a California-based fashion reporter and author of The Grown-Up Girl’s Guide to Style: A Maintenance Bible for Fashion, Beauty and More, isn’t shy about her love of plastic surgery and cosmetic dermatology. She’s had her share of both and is quick to admit how easy it is to become addicted to something that, in her opinion, isn’t all that painful and has such immediate payoff.
“It just turns back the clock so rapidly,” she says. “If you have the money and looks are important to you, it’s a very good investment. There’s not a lot of pain. It’s almost like a little vacation. [Often] the results are so good that you get greedy. I think the problem and the important thing is to have some restraint and not to get greedy.”
After one successful procedure, “you start noticing other areas of your face and body that might not match,” she explains. “It’s very easy [to get addicted]. I really had to put the brakes on myself.”
But even a dyed-in-the-wool cosmetic surgery fan like Schwab knows the dangers.
“I always look the best I can without looking foolish, and that’s a very fine line to cross,” she says. “I don’t want to look like Joan Rivers.”
She also notes Melanie Griffith’s “duck lips.” “I’m sure when Melanie Griffith looks in the mirror, she thinks her lips look like Angelina Jolie’s. But she doesn’t look like Angelia Jolie. Angelina Jolie’s are natural. Nobody close to a celebrity tells them the truth.”
A veteran of the fashion industry, Schwab, who is in her 50’s, is all too familiar with the pressure to look perfect in today’s beauty-obsessed world, and finds celebrities who deny having had plastic surgery to be woefully irresponsible. She recalls watching former supermodel Christie Brinkley on a recent talk show. When asked how she stays so young looking, she responded with “‘Oh, I drink a lot of water. I exercise and get enough sleep,'” Schwab recounts. “And I’m thinking, ‘how dishonest!’ They’re doing everything that’s available to them. They set the bar really high for the average person.”
As for people denying that they had cosmetic surgery? Dr. Basner isn’t surprised. “It’s the one thing nobody talks about,” the surgeon says. “We still condemn women who have cosmetic surgery. We’re scared of our own mortality. As a society, we don’t have the social mores that we’re mortal and are going to die.”

Terry Goodwin, for one, isn’t ashamed to talk about the cosmetic surgery she’s had, but her post-op agony will prevent her from getting any other procedures—and leaves the 34-year-old wondering how people can get addicted at all. The Westminster native had a breast augmentation in 1998, going from an A cup to a C. She’s thrilled with the results—”I never felt proportionate,” she says. “I never felt I could wear clothes that fit well”—but had to go back under the knife just days after her surgery because one breast implant was higher than the other.
“It was extremely painful,” Goodwin says of the ordeal. “It wasn’t anything like [the surgeon] said it was going to be. He said it would feel like I had done 100 push-ups. I felt like I’d been beaten. I could not sit up or get out of bed by myself. I was miserable. It was definitely more uncomfortable than he had prepared me for.”
The worst part? Her implants, like all others, will eventually need to be replaced.
“I’m absolutely dreading it,” she says with a sigh. “I don’t want to ever go through that again.”
Goodwin feels the media coverage of plastic surgery didn’t sufficiently prepare her for her ordeal. Many doctors agree. Plastic-surgery-themed television shows, such as Dr. 90210 and Extreme Makeover, “glorify and glamorize” cosmetic surgery, Dr. Cohen says. “I don’t think they’re terribly realistic or informative,” he states. “They’re more glamorized. People don’t realize it takes a lot of recuperation—ups, downs, hills, and valleys. The transition isn’t really overnight. It can take quite a long time.”
Just ask Terry Goodwin.
“Whenever I see something on TV about how people are addicted to [plastic surgery], I don’t know how they can be,” Goodwin sighs. “For some reason, it must be like having a baby because you forget the pain and the misery and you’re ready for that next round.”

As far as celebrating New Year’s Eve in Iraq goes, the holiday was going well for Jonathan Kuniholm. He had spent the last evening of 2004 with a few dozen fellow Marines and Army soldiers, taking a break from the war to enjoy a talent show at the chow hall. Using a borrowed acoustic guitar, he played and sang “Driver 8” by R.E.M., and a bluegrass version of “Greensleeves.”

The next day, while investigating a grove of palm trees along the Euphrates River, an improvised explosive device blew up in the middle of a clearing and knocked Kuniholm to the ground. The blast broke his rifle in half and nearly severed his lower right arm. A medic applied a tourniquet to the shattered arm, which was later amputated below the elbow.

He doesn’t like to talk about it. “I’m glad I’m not dead,” says Kuniholm, 35. “Anything after that is a gift.”

But get him talking about his life since, and the words flow much more freely. When he’s not working as a Duke University doctoral student in biomedical engineering—he may eventually benefit from his own research into grasp control—he works at an industrial design firm he co-founded almost four years ago in Durham, North Carolina. But every day, he is still making the transition to life as an amputee.

“If I need to test the bathwater to see if it’s too hot for my son, I’m going to do it with my other hand,” he says. “If I’m going to hold my son’s hand, I’ll use my other hand.” His son will still hold the prosthesis without complaint, and so will other children. But he has to look at where his prosthetic hand is to see if anyone is on the other end. “It takes me a little longer to tie my shoes. It takes me a little longer to put on my pants. As long as I know and understand and don’t let it frustrate me, there’s not a whole lot I can’t do.”

When he plays guitar now, his left hand’s fingers press the strings against the frets, changing chords like always. But the guitar pick goes in a prosthetic hand that strums only—no finger picking. “It chews up my guitar a little bit. If I miss with the pick, I gouge it all up,” he says.

Like many amputees, Kuniholm has a different prosthesis for different tasks. There’s his body-powered prosthesis, which operates with cables and rubber bands. When he moves the rest of his arm, the hand end opens and closes based on the distance between the hand and harness strapped to his opposite shoulder.

He also has a myoelectric prosthesis, activated by electrical impulses from his forearm muscles, but he doesn’t wear it because other prosthetics work better. The one he uses for flying airplanes is shorter than a regular arm and doesn’t bend. And he has another with a basic hand prosthetic, complete with a cosmetic covering, which helps minimize the stares of strangers. He uses yet another to control a stylus when he is doing his design work.

“Prosthetics tend to do very few things well,” he says.

Despite the swath of medical marvels and technological strides made in helping patients, prosthetic hands have long been left behind on the evolutionary ladder. Hand and arm prosthetics have evolved very little from simple, crude approximations of the natural limb developed decades ago. Look at the current technology for prosthetic legs, for example: The devices let amputees climb stairs, run a marathon, drive a car, or kick a ball with a child.

“Why can’t we do that for the arm and the hand?” asks Colonel Geoffrey Ling, program manager at the Defense Advance Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which is overseeing a project to improve prosthetics. “The best hand prosthetic one can get is a hook, right out of Peter Pan.”

Its functions are limited, and it’s inflexible. “It’s heavy, it’s clumsy, [and] cosmetically, it’s just horrid,” says Ling.

Something is, finally, being done. Ling and Kuniholm are both part of a $70 million effort by the federal government to change that frustrating fact. And they’re just two of hundreds of people attempting to build a better arm for the many American soldiers who have undergone amputation following injury while serving in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Spearheading this work is the Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, just down the road from Baltimore. The legendary facility—one that is known for its innovative military and aerospace technology—is leading an international 250-person effort to create an artificial arm that works as well as a natural one.

The project’s goals are lofty: APL hopes to design an arm that can sense temperature, touch, and vibration, and that can sense the position of the arm and hand relative to the body. An arm that can tolerate heat, cold, water, humidity, and dust. An arm that will allow an amputee to regain the fine motor control needed to thread a needle, use a computer keyboard, or play a piano or a guitar. And a hand that will not just strum a guitar, but one that will let the wearer use the prosthetic fingers to perform fretwork and change chords.

The arm must also fit comfortably enough to use for 18 hours a day, and have the internal power to work for at least 24 hours.

Right now, “the best hand prosthetic one can get is a hook, right out of Peter Pan,” says Colonel Ling.

And it has to last for 10 years.

The first phase of the project—dubbed Revolutionizing Prosthetics 2007—aims to integrate existing technologies and map out areas of research for a new kind of mechanical arm. Last year, the APL won a $30.4 million grant to develop an entirely new arm that works like a biological limb. APL is serving as the project’s lead institution, working with dozens of colleges and universities in the U.S. and Europe, plus research and industry leaders such as Otto Bock Health Care of Germany and the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago. Hopkins’ schools of medicine, engineering, and public health are working on the project as well.

If DARPA officials like the results, the lab will get another $24.4 million toward the project’s second phase. That project—called Revolutionizing Prosthetics 2009—will create an arm that transmits data to and from the brain; it aims to create an arm that is sensitive enough to sense temperature and texture, yet strong enough to lift a suitcase.

Possibly the earliest evidence of amputation and prosthetic surgery came from the Egyptian pyramids at Giza, where archaeologists uncovered a mummy dated to between 1550 and 700 B.C. According to The Lancet, the London-based medical journal, the woman’s big toe had been amputated and replaced with a wooden prosthesis that was painted dark brown. Two wooden plates and seven leather strings held in place a perfectly shaped big toe, even including the nail.

Centuries later, in 484 B.C., the Greek historian Herodotus wrote about an imprisoned Persian soldier named Hegesistratus. With one foot bound in wooden and iron stocks, he cut off part of his own foot and escaped. Later, he wore a wooden replacement and became an enemy to Sparta.

In the U.S., prosthesis technology advanced during the Civil War, which produced some 50,000 amputees. Government funding for Civil War veterans and the discovery of anesthetics allowed longer surgeries to attach more functional prosthetics. World War II produced nearly 7,500 major amputations, spurring development of currently used technology. Today, prosthetics consist mostly of body-powered mechanical parts made of straps, bands, metal, wood, and plastic—and no matter how they are assembled, they are a poor substitute for one of the human body’s most dynamic and elegant devices.

“The human limb system is an incredibly complex and very amazing system,” says Stuart D. Harshbarger, program director at the Applied Physics Lab. “Look at how strong a human hand is. For its volume, it’s fast, dexterous. It’s silent when you move it. Its skin covering doesn’t leave big baggy areas when you move it,” he continues. “It’s a very highly integrated biological system that’s remarkably capable.”

The big challenge, explains Harshbarger, is to copy the arm’s mechanical systems and fit them into the space of a human limb. In this case, the goal is to make something no heavier than a woman’s arm (which weighs an average of seven pounds) that can lift up to six times as much as its weight. An arm made of existing mechanical parts would weigh six times that much.

Part of the problem facing developers is that arms and hands are far more complicated than legs and feet. Hands have between 20 and 30 tiny muscles and joints that allow someone to type, button a shirt, pick up a pencil, or carry a grocery bag. Toes and feet help with a much smaller range of balance and mobility tasks.

Researchers started by looking at current leading-edge technologies ranging from state-of-the-art prosthetic limbs to robotics to spacesuits that allow astronauts to manipulate their hands. By the end of last year, they finished Prototype 1, which was designed to have “seven degrees of freedom.” Proto 1, as developers call it, can move at the shoulder and in two ways at the elbow, flex and rotate the wrist, and pinch fingers together or with the thumb at the top—as if holding keys or a dollar bill.

“Look at how strong a human hand is. It’s a very highly integrated biological system that’s remarkably capable.”

On a rainy Friday in January, in a squat, painted-brick office park in Laurel, researchers at APL are packing up Prototype 1 for a trip to Chicago, where a double amputee from an electrical accident is waiting to test it.

On the floor, a worker sifts through a plastic tub of startlingly lifelike prosthetic arm covers, selecting one for the strapping mannequin representing the modern American soldier. Under harsh fluorescent lights, a half-dozen researchers and developers click at computers nestled amid piles of papers, empty soda bottles and a half-eaten package of Oreos.

The mannequin towers at 6 feet, 4 inches tall, wearing black combat boots, sand-colored fatigues, helmet, and sunglasses. Computer cables jut out from the left shoulder, which joins a dark gray upper arm the size and shape of a potato chip can. The mechanical hand looks like something out of a Terminator movie.

Presiding over Proto 1’s final workout before getting its first human test, deputy project manager John Bigelow smiles as he describes the action as a programmer manipulates the device using a computer and mouse. The arm rises up and down, the palm turns upward and down, and the fingers slowly open and close. The arm moves a little too fast in first tests, so developers put speed thresholds in place.

“It’s quite peppy,” Bigelow says.

By August, the APL team must deliver and demonstrate Prototype 2, which must show even greater capability. If DARPA likes it, then the group will spend the next two years getting this new technology—which will become the new standard—ready for commercial manufacturing and for Food and Drug Administration review by the end of 2009. Working with Otto Bock, one of the world’s largest prosthetics makers, parts of the new technology will become commercially available along the way.

“What we’re most excited about is the technology that will be developed,” says Dr. Ross E. Andersen, an associate professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. “It will have a phenomenal effect on the field of prosthetics.”

Researchers are collecting input from the people who know best what a better artificial arm needs. Andersen has gone to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. three times to meet with amputees, physicians, and therapists to ask them their opinions. Soldiers are talking about the kinds of activities they want to do, like skeet shooting, fishing, and water skiing. They want better looks, fit, and function without weightier limbs, Andersen says. “We’re getting some good feedback that will help the engineers come up with something that won’t sit on the shelf.

“We’re not developing some one-shot bionic limb,” he says. “The last thing we want to develop is a limb that on paper looks good but that a patient won’t use.”

Like the human arm, a prosthetic limb has many parts. The “terminal device,” a term borrowed from robotics, is the piece a wearer uses to interact with the world. A hand or a hook usually attaches to some kind of wrist, then a frame that attaches to the wearer’s remaining arm. Different terminal devices do different jobs, whether holding a guitar pick or a stylus. And while one prosthesis might let the wearer pick up a suitcase, it would crush an egg.

Individual prostheses are as different as the people who wear them and the myriad tasks humans do. Some amputees want a prosthesis to help them pursue their passions—playing piano, quilting, or hiking. Looks are most important for others, who want only to avoid cruel or curious stares.

Experts say the commercial incentive is slim to develop a better prosthetic arm. Research and development is slow (but is being sped up by these DARPA projects), and it takes years for any business to recoup product design costs. Researchers have abandoned numerous innovations over the years because there aren’t a lot of people to buy them.

Because of the small consumer market, prosthetics makers must wait for other industries to develop new technologies that are adaptable to their field, says Gary Berke, president of the American Academy of Orthotists and Prosthetists, a 2,500-member organization based in Alexandria, Virginia. Batteries to power artificial limbs used to be huge, but cell phones and other electronics slimmed them down. “We basically leech off of those,” Berke says. Current prices start around $7,000 for a basic above-the-elbow prosthesis, reaching as high as $75,000 to $120,000 for what DARPA is developing, he estimates.

“We’re not developing some one-shot bionic limb,” says Hopkins professor Ross Andersen.

While the federal government is pouring millions of dollars into building a better prosthesis, nobody at Hopkins is going to get rich off the project. Prosthetics is a notoriously low-margin industry. “One of our colleagues was joking,” Andersen recalls, “‘if we’re really successful, we’ll make thousands of dollars.'”

Each year, 82 percent of amputations occur because of diabetes and other complications of the vascular system, the body’s network of blood vessels, according to the National Limb Loss Information Center, based in Knoxville, Tennessee. Nearly all of those amputations—97 percent—happen to the leg. More than two-thirds of trauma-related amputations, however, happen to the arms.

Among the 1.9 million people living with limb loss in the U.S., most of them don’t need a better arm. But the project became a priority at DARPA—which was founded after the launch and orbit of the Soviet Sputnik spacecraft surprised the Western world—after the U.S. went to war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Improvements in body armor saved lives, but left survivors with missing limbs. By January 2, Walter Reed had treated 383 amputees from the war in Iraq and 38 from Afghanistan, a hospital spokeswoman says.

“Before the war . . . we didn’t have young people losing their arms,” says Colonel Ling, the DARPA program manager, who served in Afghanistan in 2003 and Iraq in 2005. “In Afghanistan, there wasn’t a day that went by that I didn’t see a kid who lost a hand or a foot from a Russian land mine.”

Part of the new research is looking into how to pick up a stronger signal from the brain when it tells the arm and fingers what to do. In a way, it’s like someone in Takoma Park trying to tune into broadcast television from Baltimore. The signal is clear enough, but not as good as in Fells Point. In prosthetics research, TV Hill is the brain, Fells Point is the shoulder, and Takoma Park is the elbow. The elbow gets the signal, but the shoulder gets it stronger.

In the amputee who will be testing Prototype 1, surgery remapped his remaining nerves at the shoulder to the pectoral muscles (or between the spinal cord), which act like an amplifier of the brain’s signal. Surface electrodes on his chest then pick up nerve impulses—and the brain’s instructions to the arm. In Prototype 2, developers are picking up the brain’s signal in new ways, such as by implanting sensory capsules the size of two grains of rice under the skin. The tiny devices wirelessly transmit sensory data—temperature or touch—back to the nerves.

“The trick is to put the signals back in the brain,” Ling says. “We’ve got to hack into the central nervous system itself.”

Paul Goszkowski changes his prosthesis like he changes his shirt. He wears a different artificial leg depending on whether he’s walking his dog, cutting his grass, or building a pond out of three tons of Pennsylvania bluestone—the project he chose to pull him from a post-amputation funk. “You have to try something so out of the ordinary just to convince yourself that the loss is not going to affect your life,” says Goszkowski, 47, a chiropractor in Federal Hill. “I had to learn how to use a shovel without a leg.”

A diabetic since age 4, Goszkowski developed two small blisters on his toes that wouldn’t heal. Two toes were amputated after bone infection set in; a subsequent surgery led to infection that eventually cost him most of his right leg in 2001. Coming out of the hospital, Gozskowski found little help for a new amputee. He quickly realized he can’t wear his prosthesis in the shower—the mechanical parts will rust—but he didn’t know where to find items for everyday activities, such as a shower chair.

“I was told by the occupational therapist in the hospital, ‘I think Sears carries that.’ I was just appalled. They had taken this leg but couldn’t tell me how to live without it,” Goszkowski says.

After three years of trying to find adaptable wheelchairs and exercise equipment he could use, Goskowski and fellow amputee John Yanke founded the Amputee Center of Maryland, an information network and support group. The center’s website, amputeecenterofmaryland.org, features a handy 120-item glossary of amputee-related terms plus a list of doctors, homebuilders and exercise equipment makers who cater to amputees.

“It’s the frustration level that gets to people. That frustration level is so high,” says Goszkowski, 47. “Imagine your life right now. If you’re driving or talking on the phone, you limit yourself to only half of what you can do.”

Goszkowski and Yanke developed a handbook to answer questions for new amputees, and they wrote pamphlets about how to clean and care for the residual limb. A prosthesis sometimes relies on a sort of sleeve that rolls up over the stump, gripping like a scuba diver’s suit. Halting air circulation around a stump can trigger bruising and infection, and amputees constantly have to care for the residual limb, Goszkowski says.

Many of the amputees who have come to Goszkowski’s group started as healthy people with no major health problems. One man was a sailor sanding his boat. He cut his leg and stayed in the Chesapeake Bay all day; infection claimed the limb. Another was a carpenter who cut his leg on a piece of old timber. One woman in her 30’s slipped and got a splinter when she fell—ironically—down a wheelchair ramp. A few months later, she lost the leg.

Sometimes Goszkowski almost forgets he’s an amputee. Women and children fawn over his 3-year-old dog, a Corgi named George, when the two go for a walk. “If I go in my shorts, and I don’t have a covering on my prosthesis,” Goszkowski says, “it’s like I’ve grown a third eye, and they don’t want to let their kid touch my dog.”

In past decades, the small consumer market forced the abandonment of lots of innovative ideas for prosthetics. The DARPA project ends in 2009, but it will take many years for the advances made at APL and other centers to reach the general public, officials say. When it does, it will cost about as much as a new Mercedes, estimates Ling.

“If I go out in my shorts, and I don’t have a covering on my prosthesis, it’s like I’ve grown a third eye.”

That will be too expensive for people like Sarah Mallon. She was born with her left arm ending five inches below the elbow; therefore, all her mosquito bites end up on her right arm. And neither a prosthesis—nor her left arm—is any good for scratching those itches. Also, since buttons on women’s shirts are on the left side, she says it’s aggravating to button a shirt with the “wrong” hand.

Mallon, 34, got her first prosthetic as a 6-month-old orphan. Her occupational therapist adopted her and raised her in Simsbury, Connecticut; she always wore her prosthesis except when sleeping, bathing, or swimming.

In first grade, as the only kid with a visible handicap who wasn’t in special ed, her teacher had her present her artificial arm for show-and-tell. “Kids asked me how I turned on a light switch,” she says. Using her stump, “I walked over and turned on the light. All you have to do is put it under the switch and push it up.”

“Someone asked me how I tied my shoes,” she says. “I just sat down on the floor and told them to watch when I did it. Ask me how I do something with a prosthesis, and it’s like asking someone how they use two hands.”

Mallon hasn’t bought a prosthesis since age 18 because they are too expensive: Insurance will only pay half the cost of the $8,000 limb. She stopped wearing the device once in the early 1990’s, during a year in Mexico, where a prosthesis would have labeled her as rich and a target for muggings.

A few years later, working at a home for children with mental and physical problems, she accidentally cut a boy with her prosthesis, and stopped wearing it around children. “Since I have my own kids, that means I don’t wear it anymore,” she says.

But last month, Mallon decided to give it another try: her youngest child is now 4, and she feels the risks are now very small—plus her mother offered to pay half of the cost.

Mallon was fitted for her first new prosthesis in 16 years. With straps and a closeable hook powered by back and shoulder movement, “it’s almost exactly like the one I had when I was younger,” she says. One improvement is that it attaches with a sort of silicone “sock” that will prevent it from sliding around so much.

Since she’s not a veteran, she probably won’t see the expensive benefits of the APL’s work for many, many years—and there’s no guarantee that she’ll be able to afford a new prosthetic arm even when one becomes available. But she knows what she wants it to do.

“When I dream, I have two hands,” Mallon says. “My mom says that’s because I see my prosthesis as a hand. It would be so neat to have one with nails that can scratch.”

Once upon a time this Save the Bay business was all warm and fuzzy. Remember? It was back in the ’70s, when many of us had only just begun to suspect that humankind might be making a mess of things with Mother Nature. But, hey, we put a man on the moon, didn’t we? Making up with Mother Nature had to be easier than that.

So, flush with the tie-dyed idealism of the age, the nation went to work. We passed a Water Pollution Control Act and a Clean Air Act. We banned DDT and leaded gasoline. We made a lot of progress, actually. Somewhere in there—1976, to be
precise—the Environmental Protection Agency launched a $25 million study of the health of the Chesapeake Bay. The results that came back in 1983 were not that pretty at all. All the Bay’s vital signs were frighteningly weak. Its marshlands were disappearing.
Its underwater grasses were receding. Its birds and mammals and fish were suffering.

And the region, too, went to work. We launched the Chesapeake Bay Program (CBP), a federal-state partnership, to guide the Bay’s restoration. We convened a Chesapeake Bay Commission (CBC) to advise state legislatures on Bay issues. We established private nonprofits, such as the Chesapeake Bay Foundation (CBF),  the Chesapeake Bay Trust (CBT), and  the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay (ACB). With all those crazy acronyms in our corner, how could we go wrong? The first task seemed easy enough—everybody ponied up a little extra for a pretty Save the Bay license plate.

Ever since, it’s been an arduous, uphill slog. Along the way, our tie-dyed idealism has faded to the point where this Save the Bay business leaves many of us feeling dazed and confused as often as warm and fuzzy. Perhaps this dates to our first encounter with the word hypoxia. Or was it eutrophication that brought on the headache? Saving the Bay was never supposed to become an onerous civic chore on the order of understanding foreign trade policies and attending community association meetings.

But it’s two decades later, and here we are. Raise your hand if you’ve got all the details of this Save the Bay business down pat. Raise your hand if you’re dying to read another story about how long and hard and expensive and nigh on impossible it’s going to be.

No, really, you can raise your hands any time. Anybody?

Relax. We wouldn’t put you through that. The reason why we went out of our way these recent weeks to talk with experts and read long-winded reports and mine bottomless websites is so you wouldn’t have to. This Save the Bay primer is your road map through the algae blooms and dead zones and pfiesteria outbreaks of recent years. It bypasses all manner of detours and distractions, leading right to the straight-talking essentials: What’s wrong with the water?

Let’s dive in and find out.

Lesson 1: Yes, saving the Bay is a good idea.

In the beginning this much at least was something most everyone agreed with. But we’ve all endured a million partisan screaming matches over environmental issues since then. Amid all the acrimony over stuff like global warming and spotted owls, it’s easy to lose focus on the environmental realities of our own backyard.

So we’ll start by reviewing a few points that might otherwise seem obvious. First, the Chesapeake Bay is an ecological treasure of the first order. It’s an estuary—a place where salt and fresh water mingle—and therefore by definition supports an uncommon diversity of animal and plant life. But the Bay isn’t just any estuary. It’s the Yosemite of estuaries, the biggest and the best in the land. Plus, in case you haven’t noticed, it sure is pretty.

Second, the Chesapeake Bay is an economic marvel. Think the Port of Baltimore. Think tourism. Think waterfront property values and Eastern Shore real estate markets. Think sailboats and yachts and marinas and boatyards. Think fisheries and watermen and crabpickers and restaurants. It adds up to a whole bunch of money and a whole bunch of livelihoods.

Third, the Chesapeake Bay is who we are. Why’d they put a city here in the first place? Because of the Bay. Why’d the Brits send bombs bursting in air over Fort McHenry in 1814? Because of the Bay. Why is Fells Point so musty old maritime cool? Why do we swoon over clipper ships? Why are we goofy for steamed crabs? All because of the Bay.

Sure, saving the Bay is about namby-pamby stuff, all the cute critters and the sweet scenery. But it’s also about our economic assets and our civic sense of self. If we make a mess of it, we’re pretty much making a mess of our city, our state, our history, and our culture. So let’s get on with it, shall we?

Lesson 2: Yes, the Bay can be saved. Sort of.

When Captain John Smith sailed up the Chesapeake four centuries ago, he joked in his journals about how the fish were so abundant sailors could catch dinner by dipping a frying pan into the water. Reality check: We are never going to see that Chesapeake Bay. Our children aren’t going to see it either.

But that doesn’t mean we’re doomed from the get-go. Saying we can’t get back to John Smith’s Bay is sort of like saying the Orioles can’t win all 162 games this season. What’s wrong with aiming for the Save the Bay equivalent of a dizzyingly successful 90-win campaign? That would take the health of the Chesapeake back 50 or 75 years, to a time when it was much prettier and sturdier and more productive.

On this front, C. Ronald Franks, the secretary of Maryland’s Department of Natural Resources, is positively passionate. “If we do what we need to do,” he says, “we will leave a healthy, functioning Bay for our children. Will it be perfectly pristine? No. But it will be a heckuva lot better than it is today. And what we need to do is doable. I have no doubt about that.”

Lesson 3: No, saving the Bay isn’t going to be easy.

We could delve here into all manner of complexities involving look-it-up words from textbooks on geology and ecology. Instead, we’ll borrow a phrase recommended by Chris Conner, the director of communications for the Chesapeake Bay Program: “Just keep telling them the Bay is a little puddle at the bottom of a big hill,” he says.

No estuary in the world lies at the bottom of a metaphorical hill as imposing as the watershed that drains into the Chesapeake. We’re talking 16 million people on 64,000 square miles of land in six states.

Think baseball again. On that great day when Cal Ripken enters the Hall of Fame, perhaps you’ll make the giddy road trip up to Cooperstown, New York. It’s a long drive. You’ll need a potty break when you pull in. All that way away, you’ll still be flushing right into the Bay.

As estuaries go, this is the mother of all metaphorical hills.

“Everything we do on that land impacts the water,” says Ann Swanson, the executive director of the Chesapeake Bay Commission. “I don’t care if it’s taking your dog out to pee or idling your car or flushing your toilet. Everything has an impact.”

In such a sprawling watershed, problems roll downhill from every which way—old industrial cities, new suburban developments, vast swaths of farmland. A sprawling watershed also makes for political complications. Think about it this way: How much work would you get done on your house if the restoration job at hand required building permits from 26 federal agencies, six state governments, the nation’s capital, and some 1,700 different county boards and city councils?

One more complication worth noting: This Bay is also unusual in the metaphorical puddle department. It’s more shallow in more places than most estuaries. Its mouth is narrower, more restricted. This means water doesn’t flush into the ocean as easily or as quickly as in other estuaries. So saving this Bay is kind of like trying to do today’s dishes when you can’t get yesterday’s dirty water out of the sink. Yuck.

Lesson 4: And yet, saving the Bay isn’t all
that complicated.

Yes, this sounds like a contradiction. Bear with us. When you scan the newspapers day after day, the Bay’s problems roll out onto your breakfast table in wave after wave of scary headlines. The crab harvest is low! Underwater grasses are struggling! The “dead zone” is expanding! The marshes are receding! The bacteria are advancing! The rockfish carry Mycobacterium marinum!

None of this is good news. All of it bears careful monitoring. But the Save the Bay news cycle can be deceptive. It can leave us feeling desperate and hopeless over the sheer number and daunting variety of problems that need solving.

Now imagine a similar run of day-by-day headlines devoted to the next time your baby daughter catches a cold. Her nose is running! Her throat is sore! Her head throbs! Her muscles ache! She can’t even stay awake! Sounds awful, but it’s still just a cold.

Of course, what ails the Bay is much more serious than a cold. But our point is that it isn’t a slew of discrete ailments. It’s one big ailment with a bunch of interrelated symptoms. Why can’t the underwater grasses thrive? Why aren’t the crabs rebounding? Why won’t that dead zone just go away already?

Like the headline says, it’s something in the water.

That something is nutrients—namely, nitrogen and phosphorous. Nutrients in the Bay are sort of like alcohol in humans. In moderation they’re fine, even healthy. In excess, it’s another story altogether. And thanks to us humans, the Bay is on a godawful nutrient bender.

The poop we flush, the fertilizer we use, the exhaust from our cars, it’s all chock full of nutrients. Plus, we humans have a nasty habit of disrupting the natural flow of things between the Bay and its metaphorical hill. Consider rainwater. When rain falls in a forest, trees suck nutrients out of the water before it gets to the Bay. But when we urbanites and suburbanites divert rainwater along rooftops and down driveways and into storm sewers without letting it brush up against so much as a single blade of grass, that rainwater is chock full of nutrients. Only now it’s called “urban runoff.”

And so the Bay is thick with nutrients. This is where things get weird. As we all know, nutrients boost growth—that’s why poop makes such good fertilizer, right? Well, when the Bay’s on a nutrient bender, its growth patterns go haywire. It’s like the back story to the old Godzilla movies, with nitrogen and phosphorous in the roles of the atom bomb and radiation.

Algae growth, especially, goes ballistic. When this slimy stuff blooms in vast colonies in the Bay and its tributaries, it darkens the color of the water and blocks sunlight that would normally penetrate deep below the surface. The living things of the Bay and its rivers badly need this sunlight. Eventually, all that algae dies and starts decomposing. An ecology geek could spend hours explaining to you why it is that the decomposition process sucks up oxygen, but all you need to know is that it’s true: Too much decomposition means not enough oxygen. The living things of the Bay and its rivers badly need this oxygen.

There you have it, all you need to know about hypoxia and eutrophication. It’s not a pretty picture. When the Bay’s on a nutrient bender, it’s basically shutting itself off in a dark place and choking itself to death. Gruesome, to be sure, but there’s also something oddly reassuring about it. When you dig down to the essentials, it becomes clear that right now this Save the Bay business is really about only one big thing.

Better yet, we know exactly how to deal with that thing.

Lesson 5: Despite all that, we still haven’t saved the Bay.

It’s a hard job, remember? Our army of acronyms can quite rightly cite lengthy lists of positive accomplishments. Many of our politicians can quite rightly say they’ve taken significant Save the Bay strides. But the bottom line is this: In 1985, about 340 million pounds of nitrogen and phosphorous rolled down our metaphorical hill into the Bay; in 2002, that nutrient load was about 285 million pounds.

That’s a small dip. It doesn’t get us even within sniffing distance of the Chesapeake Bay Program’s long-term goal of 175 million pounds a year. It’s worth noting that this smidgen of progress came during a stretch when human pressures on the Bay were intensifying, thanks to population growth, sprawling residential development, and rising agricultural productivity. If we’d done nothing these last two decades, the Bay would be in deeper trouble than it is today.

Still, not even the most cockeyed optimist would say we’ve made enough progress. In fact, two recent books—Chesapeake Bay Blues, by Howard Ernst, and a newly updated edition of Turning the Tide, by Tom Horton—offer assessments of the pace of restoration that border on blistering. Both books are pretty heavy on the doom and gloom, but that’s okay. There’s a horse-race aspect to this Save the Bay business, and right about now is probably a good time for smart and impatient folks like Ernst and Horton to apply a little whip.

What’s the hurry? That question brings us to another of those words ecologists toss around—resiliency. It refers to the ability of a natural system like the Bay to bounce back from natural setbacks like drought and deluge and hurricane. Because it’s on a nutrient bender, the Bay has poor resiliency. That makes it vulnerable, kind of like a person with a weakened immune system.

Until its resiliency improves, there’s a constant risk the Bay will suffer irreparable damage if and when Mother Nature gets out of hand. What kind of damage? It could be anything, really—the total crash of an already iffy crab population, say, or a major advance by a destructive creature like our old friend pfiesteria. How much risk? Sorry, no way to measure that. All we know is that every day of dawdling on this Save the Bay business is an extra day of potential catastrophe.

That’s one reason we need to make real progress real soon. But it’s not the only reason. The Bay has long had the dubious distinction of being on the federal government’s list of “impaired waters.” This doesn’t much matter right this second, but it might matter a great deal if the Bay remains officially “impaired” when the year 2011 dawns.

Under current law, the feds would then have the power to impose a Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) of nutrients for the Bay. The feds aren’t exactly renowned in such situations for their sympathetic and flexible way of dealing with us locals—they pretty much just dictate what you need to do and when and how you need to do it. So mandatory TMDLs could bring down a world of regulatory hurt on Maryland and the other watershed states. 

Hard as it might be to Save the Bay by 2010, there’s a good chance it’ll be significantly easier and cheaper than the alternative.

Lesson 6: Here’s what we need to do to Save the Bay.

The Bay gets its excess nutrients from many different sources, but we don’t need to detail every last one of them. Some are too minor to merit our attention. Others lie outside our control. It’s not like we Marylanders can just vote tomorrow to outlaw the air pollution that wafts in from industrial sites in the Ohio Valley and drops nutrients into the Bay.

But three big nutrient sources are within our control. “Point source” pollution—nowadays, that’s mostly human wastewater—delivers about 20 percent of the Bay’s nutrient load. Agricultural pollution delivers about 40 percent. And the aforementioned urban runoff delivers a bit more than 10 percent.

David Bancroft, the executive director of the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay has a nifty way of shaking these numbers up and looking at what they mean from a different angle. If we do a good job on human wastewater, he says, that’ll get us about 30 percent of the way to the 2010 goals. If we also do a good job on agriculture, that’ll get us another 60 percent of the way.

Think about that. Just two fixes could get us nearly all of the way there. We’d be within a few tweaks and a little luck of hitting the nutrient magic number. The way the Alliance sees it, that might give us the luxury of putting that urban runoff business on the back burner for now. That’s a relief, considering what an expensive undertaking a serious runoff fix would be. 

Still more good news: Maryland has already put one of our two fixes into motion. That’s what the new “flush tax” is all about. It passed at the tail end of this year’s legislative session in Annapolis, a sweet note of bipartisan accomplishment amid the deafening din of deadlock over slots and taxes. Officially dubbed the “user fee for wastewater treatment facilities,” it amounts to $30 a year per household, which will go into a kitty to finance state-of-the-art nutrient-removal upgrades at the state’s wastewater treatment plants.

By Save the Bay standards, this is an astounding development. Maybe if we weren’t all so hyped up one way or the other about slots, it would have gotten more of the attention it deserves. Writing in an op-ed piece for the Sun, Chesapeake Bay Foundation President William C. Baker was downright euphoric. “Historic,” he called it. And, “The most important legislation for the Chesapeake Bay in many years.” Remember that when you feel like grumbling about having to shell out an extra $2.50 a month.

So all of a sudden, there’s only one of the big three fixes left on our list: agriculture. Unfortunately, this one’s a doozy.

Success here means getting all of Maryland’s farms to operate according to a series of “best management practices,” or BMPs. These are things like preparing nutrient management plans to avoid overfertilizing fields, planting post-harvest cover crops to suck up leftover nitrogen from the soil, and establishing forested buffer areas along all streams and rivers near farms.

There are two obvious ways to approach this. One is to pass a law that forces all the BMPs down the farmers’ throats. This has about as much chance of passing the legislature and winning the Governor’s approval as a blue crab does of winning the Maryland lottery. Plus, the cost and aggravation involved would probably put a lot of farms out of business. And it might tick the farmers off; actually, it’d probably drive them to the verge of armed rebellion.

It’s true that Maryland passed a law a few years back requiring farmers to prepare nutrient management plans, but the farmers are still bitter about that. When it comes to all the other BMPs, the carrot is likely to be a much preferable and more realistic option than the stick.

Consider one example, cover crops. Maryland already has a program that offsets costs incurred by farmers who plant them. It’s very popular with farmers. It’s very important for the Bay. But it’s also been woefully underfunded.

The flush tax law is going to help here; it sets aside about $5 million a year for cover crops out of fees paid by septic-system households. Russell Brinsfield, director of the Maryland Center for Agro-Ecology, guesstimates this will get us to about 200,000 acres of cover crops. Problem is, we’ll probably need to get up around 600,000 acres in order to hit our nutrient magic number.

Remember, there are a whole bunch of other BMPs we’ve got to deal with in farmer-friendly ways. And there’s a separate set of agricultural issues we need to deal with, related to chicken farms and chicken poop. They’re all going to be like this cover crop thing—a little too complicated and a little too expensive, especially with lawmakers staring down a $900 million hole in the state budget while struggling to fund our schools and fight our crime and protect our homeland security.

In May, the Maryland Department of Natural Resources outlined its so-called “tributary strategies” to reach the state’s Save the Bay goals by 2010. In addition to agricultural issues, it delves into urban runoff and septic systems and even a bit of air pollution. At its bottom line is a cover-your-eyes price tag of $13.6 billion. That works out to an annual rate roughly triple what we’re spending on  the Bay now. Details of the plan will be hammered out by year’s end in a series of public meetings around the state. In the meantime, a newly established Chesapeake Bay Financing Commission will begin pushing for a significant influx of federal dollars.

Lesson 7: Saving the Bay isn’t a one-time
rescue mission.

Time for another reality check. This Save the Bay business is never going to go away.

In the first place, the Bay’s recovery from its nutrient bender will take time. All the Bay’s living things won’t magically bounce back the instant that nutrient load dips down to 175 million pounds a year. It’d be best if we helped the recovery along by planting underwater grasses, creating rich habitat, restoring marshlands, and opening up fish passages. We’re doing some of that already, of course, but we might want to do more.

We’ll want to worry about oysters as well. Now that the Bay’s native oysters have been devastated by disease, scientists are trying to figure out whether we can help them come back or whether we should introduce a disease-resistant Asian variety of oyster. Oysters are useful critters—as “filter feeders,” they have the nifty habit of filtering nutrients from the water naturally.

In the second place, there’s the matter of us humans and our demographic trends. The watershed’s population is 16 million today. It’s supposed to hit 18 million by 2020. It’ll hit 20 million soon after that. That’s more poop, more car exhaust, more urban runoff, more of all the things that fuel the Bay’s nutrient bender. Even if we do get down to our nutrient magic number, we’ll need to fight like hell in the decades ahead just to keep it there.

In a way, though, all these questions are secondary. What we’ve done here is lay out a case for the primary thing—the big and essential job that absolutely needs doing to give the Bay a fair shot at a reasonably healthy future.

Of course, even this isn’t something we Marylanders can accomplish all on our own. The Bay is a little puddle at the bottom of a big hill, remember? All those other watershed states might well turn out to be total slackers who go right on with their old ways of dumping nutrients into the Bay.

But if we do our fair share, at least we’ll be the ones standing on the moral high ground. It won’t be our fault that the Bay is still thick with nutrients. And who knows? Maybe by doing our fair share as Marylanders we could accomplish something grander and more important.

“If we want the rest of the region and the rest of the nation to view the Chesapeake Bay as a national treasure,” David Bancroft says, “then one of the first things that needs to happen is we need to treat it that way ourselves. We need to be the first ones there. We need to show the way.”

So let’s go on with it, shall we?