t last October’s ASA Annual Meeting in San Francisco, the following outstanding contributors were recognized by the Malignant Hyperthermia Association of the United States (MHAUS).

MH Hotline Partnership Awards
James W. Chapin, M.D., University of Nebraska Medical Center, Omaha, and Dorming Wong, M.D., California Anesthesia Associates Medical Group, Newport Beach, California, were the recipients of the 2007 MH Hotline Partnership Awards. This award recognizes special cases in which the 24/7 MH Hotline was used to solve MH cases in real time via telephone or Internet.

Dr. Wong called the hotline because he was dealing with signs of MH during a surgical procedure in a 72-year-old woman undergoing off-pump cardiac surgery. After much discussion, they eventually concluded that the case was probably MH, and she was recommended for a muscle biopsy at UCLA.

Dr. Chapin has volunteered his time as a hotline consultant for more than 20 years.

Special Recognition for Outstanding Dedication to MH Award
Harvey K. Rosenbaum, M.D., Clinical Professor of Anesthesiology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, received a Special Recognition for Outstanding Dedication to MH Award for his leadership and vision in promoting the development of the MH Case of the Month on the Malignant Hyperthermia Web site www.mhaus.org. Henry Rosenberg, M.D., MHAUS President, said that Dr. Rosenbaum, who has been a co-director of the MH biopsy center at UCLA, took the case of the month idea and developed the presentation and structure of the challenge. He personally wrote the first 14 cases.

Special Recognition Awards
Paul D. Allen, M.D., Ph.D., Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, received the Special Recognition Award for his outstanding work in understanding the pathophysiology of MH and the development of a new animal model for MH.

Susan Hamilton, Ph.D., Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, also received the Special Recognition Award for her outstanding work in understanding the structure and function of ryanodine receptors and the development of a new animal model for MH.

Dr. Rosenberg said that Drs. Allen and Hamilton have been investigating the special characteristics of cellular structure and function in MH-susceptibles. They worked through the details of developing an animal model that expresses the mutations responsible for rendering an individual animal MH-susceptible. The animal model has already suggested that environmental temperature can modulate the development of an MH episode. The animal model will serve to provide greater information concerning the relation of DNA changes to the expression of MH.

Special Mention Manuscript Award
Laura Schleelein, M.D., Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, received the Special Mention Manuscript Award for her manuscript “Hyperthermia in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit — Is It Malignant Hyperthermia?” Dr. Schleelein and co-workers used MH Hotline data to explore how often MH is expressed in the pediatric intensive care unit. An abstract of her work may be found in the compilation of Annual Meeting abstracts posted on the ASA Web site at www.asaabstracts.com/strands/asaabstracts.

Media Award
This year’s MHAUS Media Award recognized Robert C. Morell, M.D., editor and chief for the Anesthesia Patient Safety Foundation, for his support of the educational mission of MHAUS by encouraging the publication of information that relates to the clinical findings in MH.

Daniel Massik MHAUS Anesthesiology Resident Award
The Daniel Massik MHAUS Anesthesiology Resident Award was established through the generosity of an MHAUS founder, George Massik, in memory of his son Daniel. First place went to Frank Schuster, M.D., Department of Anesthesiology, University of Wurzburg, Wurzburg, Germany, for his manuscript “A Minimally-Invasive Metabolic Test Detects Probands at Risk for Malignant Hyperthermia.”

Dr. Rosenberg said the work of Dr. Schuster and his colleagues have creatively applied physiologic information about MH to developing a minimally invasive diagnostic test for MH that might reduce the use of the standard open muscle biopsy.

About MHAUS
MH is an uncommon, inherited disorder, whereby patients who are at risk may develop life-threatening temperature elevation, muscle breakdown and changes in body chemistry, usually upon exposure to certain anesthetic gases. With rapid recognition of the changes accompanying the syndrome and administration of dantrolene sodium, mortality is averted.

MHAUS (www.mhaus.org) is a not-for-profit patient advocacy organization that is dedicated to reducing morbidity and mortality from MH and related syndromes by 1) improving medical care related to MH, 2) providing support information for patients and 3) improving the scientific understanding and research related to MH and other kinds of heat-related syndromes. In its first 25 years of existence, MHAUS has contributed to the reduction of the MH-related death rate from 80 percent to less than 5 percent.