The Maimonides Best Published Original Research Prize, an initiative of Rambam Maimonides Medical Journal, was awarded for a study that will greatly benefit patients undergoing knee replacement surgery.
Dr. Anatoli Stav receives his award
(see text for details).
Photo credit: Pioter Fliter
On March 19, 2018, the first prize was granted to Dr. Anatoli Stav for his manuscript entitled “Femoral versus Multiple Nerve Blocks for Analgesia after Total Knee Arthroplasty,” with co-authors Leonid Reytman, Roger Sevi, Michael Yohay Stav, Devorah Powell, Yanai Dor, Mickey Dudkiewicz, Fuaz Bayadse, Ahud Sternberg, and Michael Soudry (Rambam Maimonides Med J 2017;8 (1):e0006).
The scientific committee, headed by Professor Ehud Klein of Rambam Health Care Campus, advised that although all 10 original research paper published in 2017 were of excellent quality, the paper by Stav et al. far exceeded them all in terms of originality, quality, and practical results.
Regarding the winning paper, members of the scientific committee wrote, “It was a close contest between 4 of the 10 papers published in 2017, which focused on basic science and prospective clinical studies. Stav’s paper reflects on the good quality of Rambam Maimonides Medical Journal.”
The key finding of Stav et al.’s paper merits the close attention of surgeons performing total knee arthroplasty (replacement). Since 2008, guidelines for analgesia have been based on the findings of the PROSPECT Working Group (postoppain.org/ working-group), recommending a single injection femoral nerve block to control pain. Stav’s group found that following this recommendation only partially relieved pain. They found that preoperative multiple nerve blocks (MNB) provided excellent intra- and post-operative analgesia on the day of and first day after surgery. Overall pain was markedly less in patients who received MNB, than in patients with only a single nerve block. In addition, a significant decrease in morphine consumption was noted in the MNB patients.
More studies are needed to confirm these findings. However, if confirmed, the benefit to patients is great. In that event, the recommendations of the PROSPECT Group should be updated.
Rambam Maimonides Medical Journal is the only hospital-sponsored (Rambam Health Care Campus) medical scientific journal published in Israel. Donor supported, the journal has no advertising and no author, publication, nor subscription fees. The journal is peer reviewed and indexed by PubMed, Thomson Reuters Emerging Sources Index, the Directory of Open Access Journals, EBSCO, and more. In publication since July of 2010, the journal is scheduled to be evaluated for an impact factor by Thomson Reuters in March, 2019. It is currently being read by nearly 63,000 individuals from 174 nations and territories. To date, 287 manuscripts have been published by 290 authors and co-authors from 17 nations—among them are nine Nobel laureates.
Pictured (L-R): Professor Rafi Beyar, Director, Rambam Health Care Campus and Associate Editor of Rambam Maimonides Medical Journal; award recipient, Dr. Anatoli Stav; Professor Shraga Blazer, Editor-in-Chief, Rambam Maimonides Medical Journal; and Professor Karl Skorecki, Director of Medical and Research Development at Rambam and Associate Editor of Rambam Maimonides Medical Journal.