Christopher D. Barrett, MD

Assistant Professor, UNMC Department of Surgery, Division of Acute Care Surgery

Dr. Barrett is a physician-scientist with a clinical practice in trauma surgery and surgical critical care. He also has research expertise in coagulation, fibrinolysis and inflammatory perturbations after traumatic injury and major surgery, where his interest in this topic is intimately linked to his time as a U.S. Army Airborne Infantryman.

He completed general surgery residency at Harvard Medical School's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, a surgical critical care fellowship at Boston University, and a postdoctoral fellowship in biology at MIT in the laboratory of Dr. Michael B. Yaffe investigating relationships between traumatic coagulopathy, endothelial dysfunction and inflammation in trauma.

Dr. Barrett currently runs a lab as a surgeon-scientist at UNMC continuing his research investigating key molecular mechanisms that drive the profound systemic inflammatory response and endothelial responses to injury and shock that leads to exacerbated hyper- and hypocoagulopathies, end-organ failure, immunosuppression, and death after major traumatic injury to include those suffered on the battlefield. He also has an intense interest in running pre-clinical and clinical trials to improve the speed and availability of actionable information on treatable coagulation and fibrinolytic pathophysiologic states (e.g., hyperfibrinolysis in states of bleeding with shock).

His recent work spans from basic science to Phase II multi-center therapeutic clinical trials, such as the role of tranexamic acid as a context dependent pro- and anti-inflammatory agent in traumatic injury in a plasminogen-activator dependent manner, the role of the hepatocyte growth factor pathway on coagulation and fibrinolysis after major injury, novel diagnostic assay development for pathologic changes in the fibrinolysis system, the intercommunication between coagulation/fibrinolysis and the complement system after trauma with an emphasis on the role of the endothelium in linking these systems, and the STARS Phase 2a multicenter randomized control trial of tissue plasminogen activator use in COVID-19 respiratory failure (NCT 04357730).