She is a radiology resident, but also conducts gastroenterology research and supports PhD students' scientific work on many topics. In December, Dr. Brigitta Teutsch was named Scientific Methodology Expert of the Month.
Dr. Brigitta Teutsch graduated from the George Emil Palade University of Targu Mures, and she was in her fifth year when she joined the Centre for Translational Medicine. “Prof. Dr. Peter Hegyi visited us and introduced us to the institute, which was then in Pécs. I was interested in the program, so at the end of my fifth year, I went to the University of Pécs on an Erasmus program and spent two months there as a student researcher. After graduating, I returned to Pécs on a research grant. Later, I joined the PhD program.”
When the Centre for Translational Medicine moved to Budapest, Dr. Teutsch felt that she wanted to be involved in training students. As a Scientific Methodology Expert, her role is to help students and support their scientific work. “I have students from many areas, for example, from the dental group, the gastroenterology group and the gynecology-urology group. I am also a supervisor from this academic year, which I really like. I currently have a student with whom I am working on pancreatic cancer imaging.” Besides her academic work, Dr. Teutsch also practices medicine, she is a radiology resident. It's not easy to balance her duties; she does scientific work mainly in late afternoons and on weekends. There are also scientific days when she work on her own studies. “I love research and translational medicine has restructured my way of thinking. I believe that patient care should always be evidence-based. We should not say something is good just because we are used to it. It is nice to see this approach emerging in more and more areas of medicine.”
Although she is a radiology resident, Dr Teutsch is researching gastroenterology. Her primary focus is on gastrointestinal bleeding and its treatment. In such cases, there is a high risk of anemia, which may require iron replacement and even blood transfusion. Brigitta is writing her PhD thesis on this topic and will soon complete it. Together with Prof. Dr. Peter Hegyi and in collaboration with the New York University, she also deals with acute pancreatitis. In this research, they are trying to predict the development of pancreatic cancer after pancreatitis, based on CT scans. This topic overlaps radiology and gastroenterology, so it's close to Dr. Teutsch's heart.
(Szabó Emese)