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, FACHM, FAPWCA
I have conducted numerous unblinded clinical trials, mostly evaluating cellular or tissue-based Products (CTPs). These trials do not easily lend themselves to blinding. However, when I slated this topic with the title “Unblinding the...
by Thomas E. Serena, MD, FACS, FACHM, FAPWCA
Have you ever run into an acquaintance at a reception and called him or her by the wrong name only to realize it later that evening? I blush with embarrassment reflecting on those faux pas. My grandmother infamously perfected the art....
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
I do not know the origin of the phrase "...a gift from the devil's grandmother." I first read it in Einstein's letters to Schrödinger. Einstein employed the phrase to describe his fear of failing to find a unified theory of relativity...
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
This past May we celebrated the anniversary of John F. Kennedy's quixotic "moon shot" presentation to congress during which he laid out a plan to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade. To the world's surprise, his leadership...
by Thomas E. Serena MD, FACS, FACHM, FAPWCA
"Please don't bury me down in that cold, cold ground. I'd rather have them cut me up and pass me all around."
-John Prine
Fans of folk singer John Prine will recognize the homey lyrics...
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
"The average isn't average because its average. The average is average because its best." – J.B.S. Haldane
In 1972, Stephen J. Gould, the renowned paleontologist and masterful essayist, published 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
"Price is what you pay. Value is what you get"
-Warren Buffet1
Lawrence Mills introduced the concept of Value Analysis to the manufacturing industry a half century ago. The basic...
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
There are numerous societies dedicated to the fields of wound care and hyperbaric medicine:...
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...