On Friday, June 7, at the Cataraqui Golf and Country Club, members of the University Hospitals Kingston Foundation Women’s Giving Circle will hear from this year’s successful grant recipient, Dr. D.J. Cook, a neurosurgeon at Kingston Health Sciences Centre and Assistant Professor of Surgery, Queen’s University. Dr. Cook is testing a novel approach to more timely and convenient diagnosis of brain bleeds.

Dr. Cook and a team at KHSC, Providence Care and Queen’s University are working in partnership with a Kingston medical device company to test the capabilities of a hand-held scanner to rapidly detect bleeding in the brain. The portable, radiation-free device helps doctors more quickly detect the presence and severity of bleeding, ensuring patients receive care more quickly.

“Over the last five years I’ve seen patients who were thought to have dementia but we later found out through a CT scan or a neurological deficit that they had chronic bleeds, and when we treat the bleed, some of these patients get better,” says Dr. Cook. “Imagine if your family doctor or local clinic had a simple, fast way to identify and monitor this kind of injury.”

Dr. Cook’s studies are currently underway and expected to be completed in the spring and summer of 2019.

The Women’s Giving Circle is grateful to Shoppers DrugMart’s for sponsoring its luncheons so that as much funding as possible can go to research. Since its inception in 2013 the Women’s Giving Circle group has granted more than $200,000 to support local research in areas such as: critical care/end of life, mental health, chronic pain, musculoskeletal disease and gastrointestinal disease. 

The 90-member group met in the fall of 2018 to vote on the research project to receive funding and will now have an opportunity to hear from and congratulate Dr. Cook.