Student earns praise for thyroid disease research BY DAN NEWMAN Staff Writer HOLMDEL — For more years than he can remember, Alex Stagnaro-Green has attended the annual meeting of the American Thyroid Association. From Los Angeles, to Washington, D.C., to British Columbia, he’s seen some of the top medical professionals give presentations on groundbreaking topics within the profession. So when he went to Phoenix in October for the 77th annual meeting, he thought he’d see more of the same and he did, except for one thing — or rather, one person. “I don’t ever recall a student presenting an abstract at the ATA meeting, but she pulled it off,” Stagnaro-Green said in reference to Holmdel resident Marie Rinaldi, a third-year student in New Jersey Medical School at the University of Medicine & Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ). Stagnaro-Green, an associate dean for curriculum and faculty development and a professor of medicine at the school, has overseen Rinaldi’s research on the importance of further education for endocrinologists and obstetricians/gynecologists, as well as other doctors. Rinaldi decided early on in her medical school career that she wanted do research on something within the field of thyroid disease. “My mom had thyroid disease after pregnancy and that’s what really got me interested in doing research on the topic,” Rinaldi said. “It’s something people don’t know much about and I thought it was important to educate others on it.” Rinaldi’s initial goal was to develop a survey/questionnaire that would quiz medical professionals on how much they knew about thyroid disease and pregnancy. It was to be given to hundreds of internists, obstetricians, and endocrinologists, and family practitioners among others. “We contacted a lot of hospitals in the New York metro area to see if it’s be OK to hand out our survey and eventually we received 400 surveys back,” Rinaldi explained. The study, which took over a year to complete, found that among endocrinologists, 23 percent of questions about the link between thyroid function and healthy pregnancy were answered incorrectly. Among all doctors surveyed, one-third of questions were answered incorrectly. After going over the data, Rinaldi, 24, sent in her final abstract to the ATA, meaning, she sent in the results of her study along with an explanation of the importance of her research. At first, Stagnaro-Green was the more confident of the pair. “I knew that her work was very good and it was very impressive what she had done,” Stagnaro-Green said. After playing the waiting game, Rinaldi found out that she had been accepted to present her findings in Phoenix to over 1,000 medical professionals. “I was shocked that I was accepted and that I was actually going to be presenting my research to so many people at a huge convention,” Rinaldi said. “Plus I got a travel grant to go out to Phoenix and so it ended up being a free trip, which was even better. Right away I started working on my presentation.” Her presentation was to consist of a 10-minute oral presentation, followed by a five-minute discussion. Most people would probably falter under the bright lights and pressure of being, well, younger than everyone else in the room. “She handled it beautifully,” said Stagnaro-Green, himself a renowned expert in thyroid disease. “So many of my colleagues came up to me afterward and they all said that they were very impressed with not only her research but the way she handled herself as well. It’s very rare for a medical student to do an oral presentation at a major medical convention. She took care of every step along the way, from creating the survey, to getting it peer-approved and then conducting it.” Stagnaro-Green describes Rinaldi as a typical third-year student who is still trying to figure out what particular area of medicine she’d like to focus on.” “Maybe she will go into endocrinology or obstetrics perhaps,” Stagnaro-Green said. “She is really at a point now where can pursue whatever field she wants.” Rinaldi realizes she will have to decide soon what she will do in the future and says that maybe clinical medicine will be her destiny. She also commented on something that many doctors have reiterated time and time again. Except her voice was heard by the entire medical community. “Medicine is always changing and it’s something that people need to keep up on,” she said. “More access to literature is also necessary.” Rinaldi says that she’s not sure where her zest for medicine came from — maybe because her father is a podiatrist. Or she thinks that a childhood pediatrician may have had a profound impact on her. Either way she knows that she wants to leave her mark on the medical profession. “I just want to be successful at what I do. I’ve worked very hard the last few years with this study and I want to continue to work hard and just be able to help people in the medical field,” Rinaldi said.