The magazine’s yearly awards are compiled by Consumer’s Checkbook, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit research organization that surveys Orlando area physicians, and DataJoe Research, a software and research company specializing in data collection and verification.

UCF Health Faculty Physician Practice is the clinic of the UCF College of Medicine, with locations in East Orlando and Lake Nona’s Medical City. The clinic specializes in primary and specialty care under one roof. In addition to caring for patients across the community, all UCF Health doctors are faculty members at the College of Medicine, where they educate medical students, residents and fellows, and also conduct research.

Here are the physicians recognized by Orlando Magazine and their specialties:

• , Nephrology
• , Rheumatology
• Rheumatology
• , Geriatrics
• , Internal Medicine

To learn more information on the practice or to schedule an appointment, visit visit the .

The magazine has two yearly recognition lists. Top Doctors honorees are determined by Consumers’ CHECKBOOK, a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit organization. The Premier Doctors List is a peer reviewed study done by an independent research company.

In addition to caring for patients at UCF Health’s two locations — in East Orlando and Lake Nona — the College of Medicine faculty honorees also educate medical students, residents and fellows. To request an appointment at UCF Health or to learn more about the practice, please visit .

Here are this year’s honorees and their specialty:

Top Doctors List Recognition

Mariana Dangiolo, family medicine, geriatrics

Premier Doctors List Recognition

Abdo Asmar, nephrology

Vladimir Neychev, endocrine and general surgery

Naveed Sami, dermatology

Top & Premier Doctors List Recognition

Shazia Beg, rheumatology

Neha Bhanusali, rheumatology

Joyce Paulson, internal medicine

Also honored was Diane Davey, who retired from the College of Medicine and continues to care for patients as a pathologist at the Orlando VA Medical Center.

This holiday season, you may be visiting aging family and friends you usually don’t see. So how do you know if physical changes like memory loss are normal aging or something more serious?

Forgetfulness and aging often go hand-in-hand, and the holiday craze and other stressful circumstancesĚýcan make matters worse. Ěý“Stressful situations and life-changing events have been linked to mild cognitive impairment,” says Dr. Mariana Dangiolo, assistant professor of internal medicine at the UCF College of Medicine and a geriatric medicine specialist at UCF Pegasus Health, the college’s physician practice. Ěý“Unfortunately, the fear of conditions like Alzheimer’s disease prevents many people from discussing memory loss with their doctors.” Ěý

Understanding theĚýdifferenceĚýbetween normal aging and more serious memory conditions is one step in reducing stress.

Dr. Dangiolo says slight memory loss as one ages can be expected, especially in certain conditions. She says approximately 60 percent of women undergoing perimenopause and menopause report difficulty remembering everyday information like names and phone numbers…or why they walked into a room. Other normal age-related memory loss can include sometimes forgetting names, but remembering them later; misplacing things from time to time like glasses and keys; sometimes having trouble finding the right word; and developing very specific ways of doing things and becoming irritable when routines are disrupted.

Common early signs of Alzheimer’s are more severe and specific. They can include:

If you are experiencing symptoms of memory loss, don’t automatically assume the worst. Approximately 15 percent of people will transition from having mild cognitive impairment – changes that are serious enough to be noticed by the patient and other people – to early stage Alzheimer’s disease. However, according to Dr. Dangiolo, numerous drugs also have been shown to produce mild cognitive impairment and may create or aggravate Alzheimer’s-type symptoms.

Most of the drugs that cause mild cognitive impairment include a property called “anti-cholinergic.” These medications are used for relieving intestinal cramps or bladder irritability and are labeled “anti-spasmodic.”Ěý There are 17 additional types of drugs used for many other purposes that also may have anti-cholinergic effects, such as antiemetics, antihistamines, acid blockers, antiparkinsonian drugs, antidepressants, muscle relaxants and antipsychotics.

To accurately diagnosis clinical memory loss, a neuropsychological evaluation is recommended. If you’ve noticed a recent change in your memory, contact your doctor. He or she can evaluate your overall health to determine whether any medical conditions may be affecting your memory. While there are no “cures” for memory loss, doctors can help manage the symptoms and sometimes even slow the progression.

Ěý

A ĚýCollege of Medicine team presented one poster on the use of technology to improve patient safety. Dr. Bethany Ballinger, an Orlando emergency physician and assistant professor of emergency medicine and clinical informatics, Nadine Dexter, director of the Harriet F. Ginsburg Health Sciences Library, and Dr. Mariana Dangiolo, professor of family medicine, highlighted the college’s use of iPod touches. The hand-held devices contain Epocrates, a drug database of over 3,300 drugs. The poster explained how medical students use their iPods to identify potentially dangerous drug interactions for patients they see during their training with local doctors. In addition, College of Medicine students use Geriatrics at Your Fingertips software on mobile devices as they work with senior patients.

Another AAMC poster, co-authored by Dr. Ballinger, showed how the College of Medicine became the first American medical school to initiate the World Health Organization’s (WHO) patient safety curriculum. The WHO identifies 11 areas that are key to improving patient safety, including infection control, surgery, medication and practical ways to analyze how mistakes are made.

Patient safety is one of the College of Medicine’s Longitudinal Curricular Themes (LCTs), interdisciplinary topics interwoven into the four-year curriculum. And the college’s message at the AAMC was that topics like patient safety must be emphasized at every turn.

“Safety is such an important thread in the curriculum,” said Dr. Ballinger said, who is director of the patient safety LCT. “You can’t just have a course on patient safety for three days and then be done with it. Patient safety must be a part of everything you do.”

The three students said participants at the geriatrics conference were eager to learn how a new medical school brought innovation to its curriculum. “As a new college of medicine, we have the ability to make change a lot faster,” Christina said. “Older medical schools said this was something they would never be able to do. They were asking a lot of questions about how Anatomy Lab was set up as a medical mystery — we don’t know what our first patients died of but have to discover that through the 17 weeks. The other schools were saying, ‘Why didn’t we think of that?'”

The College of Medicine presentation was one of five top geriatric education projects that conference organizers chose to be presented.

While at the conference, the UCF team shared information about the new medical school and the students, who have formed a Geriatric Interest Group (GIG), learned ways to encourage others to be interested in geriatric medicine.

Malgorzata and Reid said they became interested in geriatric care in part from their volunteer efforts with local hospice organizations. “I loved to listen to their stories,” Malgorzata said of the hospice patients. “They always had such words of wisdom to share.”