Web extra: Eric Baron, D.O. (’04)

Here are some miscellaneous facts about the lumbar headache researcher who was voted chief neurology resident at the Cleveland Clinic last year.

By Colleen Kiphart

Photo by Josh Armstrong

• He’s had brains on the brain since starting medical school. “The neurology/psychiatry block was my favorite,” Baron says. His interest in matters of the mind nearly led him to psychiatry, but the elegant exactness of neurology won him over in the end. “In neurology we can look at a scan and see the lesions—really see the problem. You can immediately determine what needs to be fixed.”

• He’s a people person. When asked what he missed most about medical school, Baron says, repeatedly, “the people. All of the people in the college and the town of Athens.”

• He was hyper-involved at OU-COM. During his first two years at OU-COM, Baron participated in ten organizations and volunteer programs, including service as secretary of the OU-COM chapter of the American Medical Student Association.

• He leaves work at work, not playing on his television. Baron cannot pick a favorite medical television show. He doesn’t watch them. Though, when pressed, he confesses, “I would probably watch Grey’s Anatomy or House.”

• His favorite medical term is “Witzelsucht.” What does that mean? According to Baron, witzelsucht is a condition characterized by “a patient’s uncontrollable tendency to tell inappropriate jokes and pointless or irrelevant stories at inappropriate times.” These outbursts, which the patient finds invariably hilarious, are typically related to lesions on the brain’s frontal lobe.

• Speaking of outbursts...  Baron recalls one of his favorite memories in early clinical contact: “We were rounding on an elderly patient who was very anemic. The staff physician said to her, ‘we’re going to give you some blood back.’ She looked up at us with a horrified look on her face and exclaimed, ‘a blood bath!’ I still crack up about that one.”

• Despite his good humor, he takes his work seriously. Baron values most highly the moments when he helps to prevent or relieve a patient’s pain. This comes through in his bedside manner, for which he was awarded the Cleveland Clinic 2007-08 Humanitarian Award. It also fuels his inventive creativity, which led him to devise the Baron Rapid Lumbar Puncture Needle, a spinal tap needle tip that decreases the recovery time and helps prevent the often severe post-spinal tap headaches.