Dr. Asanthi Ratnasekera is the Associate Trauma Medical Director at ChristianaCare in Newark, Delaware. She is currently a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons and an active committee member of the Society of Critical Care Medicine, the Eastern Association for the Surgery of Trauma, and the Association of Women Surgeons.
It was during her residency that Dr. Ratnasekera discovered a burgeoning passion for research that continued to grow through the following years as she completed a fellowship and entered practice at a community level 2 trauma center. At this trauma center, Dr. Ratnasekera established a research program and first began research that focused on traumatic brain injury (TBI), venous thromboembolism (VTE), and VTE prophylaxis.
“I really got into TBI and venous thromboembolism in trauma patients because there are gaps in knowledge in these areas,” Dr. Ratnasekera explained of her research in the field.
Dr. Ratnasekera’s early research study regarding TBI and VTE involved the collaboration of 24 institutions and saw its data published in both the Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery and Injury; Dr. Ratnasekera was also awarded the Junior Multicenter Investigator award in 2022 for the project.
Now practicing and conducting research at ChristianaCare, Dr. Ratnasekera is continuing her TBI and VTE research with pilot funding through ACCEL.
“ACCEL has been a huge support to set up this pilot project in terms of providing me the opportunity to have a dedicated research coordinator and ability to have data management and statistical analysis. ACCEL also provides mentorship, guidance, and resources to meet with other researchers such as myself.”
Dr. Ratnasekera’s current research project studies VTE in patients who have suffered a traumatic brain injury and require neurosurgical intervention. A key investigation of the project is to discover whether starting VTE prophylaxis to prevent VTE would lead to worsening intracranial bleeding. The project also aims to examine patterns of treatment such as whether patients commonly receive VTE prophylaxis, the reasons as to why treatment was potentially missed, and whether not receiving VTE prophylaxis correlates with an increased risk of VTE.
The study is receiving funding through the 11th year of ACCEL’s Community Engaged Research Studies (CEnR) program. The study title is ‘Outcomes of Initiation of Venous Thromboembolism Prophylaxis After Neurosurgical Intervention in Patients with Traumatic Brain Injury,’ and the study team includes:
- Asanthi M Ratnasekera, DO, FACS
- Claudine Jurkovitz – Mentor, Christiana Care Health System
- Jonathan Imran, MD – Collaborator