Does an Irregular Heartbeat Lead to Pulmonary Embolisms?

Maksim Vaysman Looks at Afib in the ICU

August 08, 2017
Maksim Vaysman

TouroCOM Middletown student Maksim Vaysman always knew he wanted to be a doctor, but that didn’t stop him from pursuing a degree in business administration. “Being a doctor is an incredible way to contribute to society,” said Vaysman who graduated from SUNY Geneseo. “But understanding how a business works is a good idea if you want to have a private practice.”

Vaysman spent his summer at the Staten Island University Hospital and performed two chart review studies. The first project was a retrospect chart review where Vaysman looked at whether atrial fibrillation (an irregular heartbeat) was linked to pulmonary embolism in surgical ICU patients.

“We’re finding patients who had an episode of Afib and didn’t have a heart attack, but had an embolism later,” said Vaysman. “We’re trying to establish a link.”

The second chart study looked at 150 patients who had cirrhosis (scarring of the liver) and whether they eventually were diagnosed with acute kidney injury.