Dr Brian Im and Dr. Lindsey Gurin: Exploring Brain Injury Part 1

RUSK Insights on Rehabilitation Medicine

Dr. Lindsey Gurin is a clinical assistant professor of neurology, psychiatry, and rehabilitation medicine at NYU Langone Health. She is dual board-certified in neurology and psychiatry and currently serves as Director of Behavioral Neurology at NYU Langone Orthopedics Hospital, where she provides neuropsychiatric consultation to the Rusk acute inpatient brain injury rehabilitation service. She also is Director of the NYU Combined Psychiatry/Neurology Residency Training Program. Dr. Gurin has published on neuropsychiatric manifestations of brain injury and her current research interests include psychosis after brain injury; disorders of consciousness; and catatonia in patients with neurologic disorders.

Dr. Brian Im is heavily involved in program development and academic medicine. He has an active role in brain injury rehabilitation research at NYU. After completing medical school at SUNY Upstate Medical University, a rehabilitation residency at NYU School of Medicine/Rusk Rehabilitation, and a fellowship in brain injury medicine at UMDNJ/Johnson Rehabilitation Institute, his subsequent tenure at Bellevue Hospital focused upon an interest in improving brain injury rehabilitation for underserved populations. He remains involved in this research at Bellevue Hospital while at his current role as the director for brain injury rehabilitation medicine at NYU/Rusk Rehabilitation.

In Part One, the discussion included the following: a description of the care provided at NYU for patients who experience a brain injury from the perspective of the overall number and kinds of personnel involved and the clinical facilities in which they work; early neurorehabilitation and recovery from disorders of consciousness after severe COVID-19; and the kinds of challenges involved, such as arriving at a correct diagnosis of disorders of consciousness that could prove difficult because of a combination of patient and health system factors.

In Part Two, the discussion included the following: long COVID with brain fog and treatments that are being tried; a definition of the terms catatonia and hypoxia-ischemia and a description of their causes; challenges involved in diagnosing and treating catatonia effectively in a timely manner; possible outcome of ineffective treatment occurring if catatonia is under-recognized diagnostically, and current and future research endeavors at NYU pertaining to brain injury.