Dr. Ryan Huebinger Awarded the American Heart Association’s (AHA) Young Investigator Award

Ryan Huebinger, MD, assistant professor of Emergency Medicine, received the American Heart Association’s (AHA) Young Investigator Award for his scientific abstract titled “Time to Anti-Arrhythmic for Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest”. The abstract was published in the Dec. 16 edition of Circulation, a journal by the AHA and presented at the annual Resuscitation Science Symposium.

Huebinger and his team analyzed datasets of more than 449,000 adult, non-traumatic cardiac arrests to determine the time it takes to administer anti-arrhythmic medication. Antiarrhythmic medications are pharmaceuticals that are used to treat abnormal rhythms of the heart. Their research showed a strong link between critical minutes to administer antiarrhythmic medications and the chance of resuming a sustained heart rhythm that perfuses the body after cardiac arrest; known as return of spontaneous circulation (ROSC).

Huebinger received his medical degree from University of Texas Southwestern in 2013 before completing his residency in emergency medicine at McGaw Medical Center of Northwestern University. He joined the McGovern Medical School faculty in 2018.

Senior author on the paper was Bentley Bobrow, MD, professor and chair of the Department of Emergency Medicine at McGovern Medical School. Co-authors from McGovern Medical School include emergency medicine faculty Kevin Schulz, MD, clinical associate professor; Summer Chavez, DO, MPH, Assistant Professor, Department of Emergency Medicine; and Hei Kit Chan, MPH, graduate research assistant.

Early Career Investigator Awards through the AHA are designed to recognize research endeavors by early career PhDs or MDs who are still in training or have completed training with the last four years; or PhDs and/or MDs who are still within the first four years after their first faculty appointment.

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