Thomas E. Serena
MD, FACS, FACHM, FAPWCA
Dr. Thomas E. Serena, founder and medical director of the Penn North Centers for Advanced Wound Care, is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the College of William and Mary and Penn State Medical School.
He completed his residency in surgery at the Milton S. Hershey Medical Center with fellowship training in plastic and reconstructive surgery at Southern Illinois University. He is a professor at Gannon University in Erie, Pennsylvania, where he established a state-of-the-art research program including development of a novel acute wound-healing model.
Dr. Serena operates 14 wound care centers from New York City to Tulsa, Oklahoma. He has been the lead or principal investigator in more than 45 clinical trials, including testing blood platelets, antimicrobial dressings, growth factors, topical and parenteral antibiotics and bilayered cell therapy. He founded the NewBridge Medical Research Corporation, a nonprofit corporation dedicated to advancing the science of wound healing, which has received funding from the National Institutes of Health.
By Thomas E. Serena, MD, FACS
Conceived in the operating theater and born in the home, surgical site infections (SSIs) reach maturity in the outpatient wound clinic. The woundologist, whether surgically trained or not, must understand the prevention and treatment of SSIs and...
by Thomas E. Serena, MD, FACS, FACHM, FAPWCA
by Thomas E. Serena, MD, FACS, FACHM, FAPWCA
"This is my brother Darryl and this is my other brother Darryl."
—Bob Newhart show
by Thomas E. Serena MD, FACS, FACHM, FAPWCA
In the words of Ben Franklin, “We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.” The specialty of wound care and hyperbaric medicine faces a never-ending attack from payers and regulators. Our current state of...
By Thomas E. Serena MD, FACS, FACHM, FAPWCA
Editor's note:This blog post is part of the WoundSource Trending Topics series, bringing you insight into the latest clinical issues and advancement...
By Thomas E. Serena MD, FACS, FACHM, FAPWCA
A recent article by Kaiser Health News misquoted me as saying that we enroll only "healthy" patients in our clinical trials. At moments like this, one feels that something has been overlooked. One of my research coordinators, recalling...
By Thomas E. Serena MD, FACS, FACHM, FAPWCA
Wound care Facebook friends from across the globe posted reports of their experiences at the Spring Symposium on Advanced Wound Care (SAWC) meeting in San Diego. Social media pronounced the meeting a huge success in hundreds of...
By Thomas E. Serena MD, FACS, FACHM, FAPWCA
In 1950, J. Edgar Hoover published the first edition of the FBI’s most wanted list. Since that time, no less than 512 fugitives have been featured. Many surrendered after learning that their mug shots were hanging on every post office...
By Thomas E. Serena, MD, FACS, FACHM, FAPWCA
The ancients sacrificed a brown dog at the beginning of the Dog Days to appease the rage of Sirius, believing that the star was the cause of the hot, sultry weather. Why a brown dog? I wonder. I think it more appropriate to register a...
by Thomas E. Serena MD, FACS, FACHM, FAPWCA
"I believe we possess all the resources and talents necessary. But the facts of the matter are that we have never made the national decisions or marshaled the national resources required for such leadership."
-John F. Kennedy May...
By Thomas E. Serena MD, FACS, FACHM, FAPWCA
Fans of folk singer John Prine will recognize the homey lyrics describing his views on organ donation. Sitting at my desk a few weeks ago with John Prine twanging in my headphones, I began to slog through the new Noridan Local Coverage...
By Thomas E. Serena MD, FACS, FACHM, FAPWCA
This blog comes to you written from the deck of the Independence of the Seas on the 2016 Wound Cruise. The conference on the ocean draws the best speakers in the world for obvious reasons. But like many educational events, some of the...
By Thomas E. Serena MD, FACS, FACHM, FAPWCA
Recently, I had the pleasure of attending Puccini's opera Turandot at New York's Metropolitan Opera House. In my favorite scene, young prince Calef comes upon a gruesome tableau: Potential suiters for the princess Turnadot must...
By Thomas E. Serena MD, FACS, FACHM, FAPWCA
In 1972, Stephen J. Gould, the renowned paleontologist and masterful essayist, published the theory of punctuated equilibrium in which he challenged the long held belief that evolution occurred gradually over time. He knew that the...
By Thomas E. Serena MD, FACS, FACHM, FAPWCA
An ancient Irish tradition dating back to St. Patrick permitted women to propose marriage to men on the additional day added during a leap year. The gender equality of modern society has turned this tradition into mere folklore, but it...
by Thomas E. Serena MD, FACS, FACHM, FAPWCA
Lawrence Mills introduced the concept of Value Analysis to the manufacturing industry a half century ago. The basic idea entails analyzing the function and importance of the various parts of a product as they relate to cost. He derived...
By Thomas E. Serena MD, FACS, FACHM, FAPWCA
During the 2010 presidential campaign, Sarah Palin, the former governor of Alaska, quipped during a debate that then presidential candidate Obama's health care reform contained within it "death panels": bureaucrats with limited or no...
By Thomas E. Serena MD, FACS, FACHM, FAPWCA
The Emperor's New Clothes was one of my favorite childhood stories. In this Hans Christian Anderson tale, two weavers clothe the emperor in what today would be referred to as "virtual finery." All of his ministers, advisers, factotums...
By Thomas E. Serena MD, FACS, FACHM, FAPWCA
The American Professional Wound Care Association's (APWCA) annual meeting concluded in Philadelphia the last weekend in March. The meeting featured several novel ideas in wound care education. A hands-on competency session permitted...
by Thomas E. Serena MD, FACS, FACHM, FAPWCA
Pete Seeger died a year ago last January at the age of 94. Reading a tribute to the folk singer, I ran across his most memorable tune, "Where have all the flowers gone?" I have long enjoyed the numerous versions of this folk song...
By Thomas E. Serena MD, FACS, FACHM, FAPWCA
The Black OPPS continues unchecked. My last blog addressed the recent Centers for Medicare Services (CMS) outpatient prospective...
By Thomas E. Serena MD, FACS, FACHM, FAPWCA
Resting peacefully by the fire, eggnog in hand, wearied from stringing lights and eleventh-hour shopping, I settled in for the evening. My eyes lazily perused the laptop screen when the news bulletin shattered my serenity. The Centers...
By Thomas E. Serena MD, FACS, FACHM, FAPWCA
Parents of most children growing up in the sixties read them Winnie the Pooh. My father, a Woodrow Wilson fellow in English literature, read us Homer’s Odyssey, four times. I remember listening with excitement and...
By Thomas E. Serena MD, FACS, FACHM, FAPWCA
"We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately."
Ben Franklin
By Thomas E. Serena MD, FACS, FACHM, FAPWCA
I had the honor of lecturing to an audience of mostly European physicians at the M.I.L.A.N. Diabetic Foot Conference this past February in Milan, Italy. My session this year focused on our current and ongoing research in point-of-care...
By Thomas E. Serena MD, FACS, FACHM, FAPWCA
"Would you like that super-sized?" is a phrase made popular by the fast food giant McDonald’s. The McDonald’s marketing geniuses tapped into a sentiment that permeates the American psyche. We are convinced that bigger is better; that...
By Thomas E. Serena MD, FACS, FACHM, FAPWCA
From the third floor patio of the Foreign Correspondent’s Club (FCC), the evening breeze is a welcome respite from the sweltering heat of Phnom Penh’s hospital wards. An assortment of barges and boats strung with neon lights drifts...
By Thomas E. Serena MD, FACS, FACHM, FAPWCA
One of the greatest honors of my life was being inducted into the Athletic Hall of Fame at The College of William and Mary. I was a gymnast there during my college days, a sport I chose early in life. My first loves were basketball and...
By Thomas E. Serena MD, FACS, FACHM, FAPWCA
I owe my humble thanks to GK Chesterton, the Christian apologist, for the title of this blog. In Chesterton’s book of the same title he observes that men have a strong tendency to cling to a deeply held belief despite overwhelming...