Vanderbilt Hepatology and Liver Transplant Franklin

10/31/2025

Our Vanderbilt Health teams put the care in scare this week! Thanks for making it a fang-tastic time for all.

10/31/2025

We’re excited to share our plans to acquire full ownership of Tennova Healthcare-Clarksville. This move strengthens our ability to serve patients across the region and provide high-quality care for patients with less complex needs closer to home.

The 270-bed Clarksville hospital will become the newest member of Vanderbilt Health’s network of regional medical centers in Tennessee, joining Vanderbilt Wilson County Hospital in Lebanon (owned since 2019), Vanderbilt Tullahoma-Harton Hospital in Coffee County (2021) and Vanderbilt Bedford Hospital in Shelbyville (2021).

We look forward to welcoming Clarksville fully to our growing academic medical system, and building on the services put in place since assuming 20% minority interest in the hospital, its freestanding emergency department and related physician practices in 2021.

10/29/2025

One rule for good “sleep hygiene” involves turning off screens and turning to relaxing activity in the hour before bedtime. Yoga is perfectly suited for this! Here, five yoga poses that can help calm your brain to get you relaxed and prepared to sleep. See the link in the comments to learn these poses.

10/29/2025

Ready to advance your career in radiologic technology? Explore the unmatched imaging opportunities available at Vanderbilt Health during our Fall 2025 Virtual Career Insights Session on Wednesday, Nov. 5, at 1 p.m. CT.

Are you ready to explore the next chapter of your health care career? Vanderbilt Health is growing, and we want you to be a part of it! Join us Feb. 3-7, 2025, for our Winter Virtual Event Series: Fresh Starts, Endless Opportunities. This is your chance to connect with Vanderbilt Health leaders, lea...

10/28/2025

Old skeletons help this scientist learn how to protect living ones.

Radiologist Dr. Katherine Van Schaik studies osteoporosis, which weakens bones and causes injuries such as broken hips in older adults. These fractures are scary: About 24% of people who break a hip die within a year.

Van Schaik is uniquely qualified for this focus. While in medical school, she was also studying for a PhD in ancient history at Harvard. Her early work used a portable X-ray to scan 18th- and 19th-century human skeletons buried in a London crypt. Later, Van Schaik ran computerized tomography (CT) scans on skeletons from 19th-century sailors.

Those long-dead sailors had injuries and poor diets. But they were also active, and their bones are stronger than those of many modern-day people, Van Schaik says. This suggests that “load-bearing physical activity is essential for managing bone health and for preventing bone loss,” even more than we thought.

Out of the crypt and into a Vanderbilt lab, Van Schaik uses 21st-century tools: high-tech imaging, a huge radiology archive, molecular analysis, epigenetics and artificial intelligence/deep learning techniques. The work is supported by a five-year $749,000 grant from the National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health. Van Schaik and her team want to improve the diagnosis and treatment of osteoporosis.

A big goal: Developing a blood test to show who is at risk for hip fractures, and could benefit from therapy to prevent them. (The current screening tool, a type of X-ray, has limitations.)

Van Schaik’s also working to aim more scans at another set of test subjects: the bones of Egyptian mummies!

Read more about the, uh, backbone of Van Schaik’s work by tapping the link in the comments.

10/27/2025

Nicole Kidman's support of breast cancer research at the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center is personal and powerful. Her message with Dr. Vandana Abramson highlights the impact of expert care and giving. Watch and share to help us spread awareness for breast cancer, accelerate progress and bring healing to more lives. We are so grateful for Nicole’s generous support. 💙
Learn more here: https://give.vanderbilthealth.org/campaign/730461/donate?c_src=M26CZ&c_src2=FB

10/23/2025

We are happy to welcome Dr. Eric Barlow and his family back home to Middle Tennessee.

Barlow is an orthopedic surgeon, fellowship-trained in sports medicine. He is from Murfreesboro, Tennessee, but spent recent years practicing in Kentucky before returning.

Barlow began caring for patients at Vanderbilt Bedford Hospital on Sept. 1. One of the services he offers patients is robotic total knee arthroplasty.

In Barlow’s own words:

I care for patients of all ages with musculoskeletal ailments.

I went into health care after early exposure to the medical field, and specifically surgery, thanks to my mother. I was able to meet and learn from different medical professionals, which allowed me to gain a passion. Being an athlete and having different injuries allowed me to meet orthopedic surgeons, which led me to pursue my career in orthopedics.

I was drawn to Vanderbilt Health for personal and professional reasons. I am from Middle Tennessee and with my growing family, we were excited to find an opportunity back home where we could be closer to family and friends and serve the community I grew up in. Additionally, Vanderbilt is a great company with many resources that allows me to practice in an environment that encourages me to grow as a medical provider.

I enjoy working at Vanderbilt because of the opportunities that being part of a large academic health system allows me – such as education, research opportunities and camaraderie. I am able to continually critique my practice and better myself in order to provide care for my patients.

I enjoy spending time with my wife, daughter and our Golden Retriever. We enjoy trying new restaurants and traveling. We are University of Tennessee and Virginia Tech football fans, so you can find us watching games either at home with friends and family or in Knoxville, Tennessee, or Blacksburg, Virginia.

See the link in the comments to make an appointment with Barlow and the team at Vanderbilt Orthopaedics Shelbyville.

10/22/2025

Congratulations to the Vanderbilt Birth Center on its 10th anniversary and about 2,800 births!

In September, the center (formerly Baby+Co) celebrated 10 years of midwifery-led, out-of-hospital birth, perinatal care and comprehensive health care. For the anniversary, the center hosted an open house, and Kendra Ashton Photography volunteered to photograph families who welcomed babies here over the years. Swipe to see some of the photos!

The center’s team of certified nurse midwives is dedicated to low-risk, unmedicated births. All care — from gynecology, preconception and prenatal visits to labor, delivery, postpartum and early newborn visits — happens here. Birth suites offer a tranquil atmosphere, with experienced staff, queen-size beds, roomy showers, dim lighting, essential oils, birth balls and portable speakers for music.

Significantly, this is one of only two accredited birth centers in Tennessee offering tubs for water births, a popular option for unmedicated labor. Midwives have been part of Vanderbilt Women’s Health for more than 30 years, but the birth center is one of the few in the U.S. that is a freestanding center affiliated with a teaching hospital. The connection to Vanderbilt University Hospital is important: Should a transfer become necessary during labor, the birth center staff ensures it happens seamlessly.

As Vanderbilt Birth marks a decade of care, the team reflects not just on the numbers, but the relationships — the families who return multiple times and the children who now walk through the doors they were born behind.

“We will always need high-risk, medicalized care for some women,” said Lila Humbert, MSN, CNM, one of the center’s midwives – and a client herself; she gave birth to her children at the center. “But for women in low-risk pregnancies, an unmedicated birth experience is simple, beautiful and its own kind of magic.” Click on the link in the comments for more detail about the Vanderbilt Birth Center.

10/22/2025

Yoga can be a helpful tool for combating chronic pain. Try a beginner class at a local studio or online, and also try these eight moves designed to ease chronic pain. See the link in our comments for these gentle poses.

10/15/2025

Since 2006, the Aspirnaut program—founded by Drs. Billy and Julie Hudson—has empowered hundreds of students from rural communities through summer research, professional skills development and wellness training. We are so grateful to the Springer-Lu Family Foundation for their lead gift, which will help shape the future of Aspirnaut.

Be part of the impact and support the next generation of scientists. You can give today by visiting VanderbiltHealth.org/aspirnaut.

10/14/2025

Performing a few sets of shoulder presses every other day can reduce pain. This at-home exercise is meant for stiff, achy or weak shoulders. It will stretch and strengthen the muscles and connective tissue that make up your shoulders. Click on the link in our comments for a how-to.

10/13/2025

“When your hands stop working, everything else becomes harder,” said Julie Byrd-Jenkins, who lived with carpal tunnel pain for years without access to surgery.

At this year’s Orthopaedics Outreach Day, she was one of 13 patients to receive free orthopedic procedures at the Vanderbilt Surgery Center in Franklin. More than 60 staff and community partners came together to provide hand, sports and — for the first time — foot and ankle surgeries.

“It’s a day that resets the soul,” said Dr. Eric Bowman.

See how this annual outreach effort brings care to patients who need it most.
Full story in the comments below.