Spontaneous spinal epidural hematoma (SSEH): A rare cause of spinal cord compression

Rebecca Theophanous, MD, MHSc, FAEMUS is an Emergency Ultrasound Faculty at Duke University Hospital and the Durham VA Healthcare System. 

She is actively involved with clinical ultrasound education, teaching residents and students on shift, performing weekly ultrasound image review, presenting monthly advanced ultrasound talks, and teaching at monthly resident simulation sessions.

Her first-author publications investigate the diagnostic utility and accuracy of 3D ultrasound for assessing ocular complaints, and she developed a point-of-care ultrasound implementation intervention for VA clinicians (funded by an SAEMF/AEUS grant in 2022-2023). Furthermore, she completed a Master of Health Sciences degree through Duke’s Clinical Research Training Program and served as site PI for the Reason3 POCUS in cardiac arrest trial. Her recent SAEM ARMED MedEd studies involve implementation and testing of POCUS simulation-training methods (nerve block training funded by SAEMF), resident and faculty development, and POCUS competency testing.

Dr. Theophanous leads as an AAEM-EUS councilor and SCUF Education fellowship curriculum subcommittee lead. She has presented both didactic and research-based talks at national conferences and has experience writing POCUS guidelines and policy on her hospital’s POCUS taskforce. Finally, she is a reviewer for multiple medical journals, including for the Journal of Ultrasound in Medicine.

Joshua Broder, MD, FACEP is Professor, Residency Director, and Vice Chair of Education in the Department of Emergency Medicine at Duke University School of Medicine.  Dr. Broder has taught medical student, graduate medical education, and continuing medical education courses for the past 20 years and mentored undergraduate and graduate students.  He has been an invited education speaker nationally and internationally, including meetings of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine, the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP), the Council of Residency Directors (CORD) in Emergency Medicine, the Eurasian Congress on Emergency Medicine, and the Society for Emergency Medicine in Singapore.  Dr. Broder is a North Carolina native and earned a bachelor’s degree in biology from Duke University in 1994.  After graduating from the Yale School of Medicine, he trained and was Chief Resident in Emergency Medicine at the University of Maryland.  Dr. Broder received the ACEP National Emergency Medicine Faculty Teaching Award and CORD National Faculty Teaching Award in 2007.  He was chosen as a "Distinguished Educator" for Enduring Educational Materials by the CORD Academy for Scholarship in Education in Emergency Medicine in 2013.  He was recognized with the Duke University School of Medicine Master Clinician-Teacher Award in 2016.  In 2022, he received the Parker J. Palmer “Courage to Teach” Award for Program Director Excellence from the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME), a national education leader award.

Dr. Broder wrote and edited Diagnostic Imaging for the Emergency Physician, which received the 2011 American Publishers Award for Clinical Medicine.  Since 2007, he has written the monthly column “The Critical Image” for ACEP’s Critical Decisions in Emergency Medicine (>180 articles).  He has more than 50 PubMed indexed publications.  His research and education initiatives focus on appropriate use of emergency diagnostic imaging, as well as engineering and patient safety.  He conducts clinical research in the Emergency Department at Duke, has received foundation grant funding, and is an inventor of a novel ultrasound device.  He serves on multiple national committees including the American College of Emergency Physicians Clinical Policies Committee and American College of Radiology Appropriateness Criteria Committee.  He chaired the SAEM GRACE-2 writing committee on recurrent low-risk abdominal pain and was first author on the resulting 2022 clinical guideline.