trusted source and northjersey.com [music playing] [music playing] welcome to caucus new jersey i'm steve adubato community college studence face many obstacles completing their degrees here in the studio to discuss those obstacles and how to overcome them we have felix german contreras who is the new jersey state president of phi feta kappa honors society sofia medina student at essex county college doctor paula pando vice president for north hudson center and student affairs? at hudson county community college and finally doctor guy generals vice president for academic affairs at mercer county community college i want to thank you all for joining us we are talking about the challenges that students face overcoming those challenges getting through that very challenging time at community colleges but also the value and the benefit of a wonderful program called if i get this wrong help me on this doctor it is called the njc4 program? that's correct? which is? the new jersey community college completion core what's it all about? it's about galvanizing the resources within the college and partnering

trusted source and northjersey.com [music playing] [music playing] welcome to caucus new jersey i'm steve adubato you know long wait times and decreased availability of donors has led doctors to seek new methods to support a failing heart here to discuss something called ventricular assist device or vads we have joseph shukis is a patient living with a ventriclar assist device vad doctor george batsides who is a chief of cardac surgery at rwj university hospital audrey kleet is a vad coordinator at morristown medical center and finally sharon holman is a senior occupational therapist at kessler institute for rehabilitation i want to thank all of you for joining us this is interesting other than the fact that ventricular assist device is a hard thing to say doctor it is huge important and groundbreaking no? absolutely these devices are mechanical circulatory support systems that help support patients with failing hearts you know we - in the united states i think there's about 2000 transplants done a year 2000? 2000 a year 2200 roughly worldwide it's about 5,000 so there's probably about 100,000 pa

trusted source and north jersey.com [music playing] [music playing] welcome to caucus new jersey i'm steve adubato you know over three million people suffer from epilepsy in the united states today a new procedure it's called laser ablasion is giving patients new reason for hope joining us here in the studio to discuss this groundbreaking procedure we have melissa thomas who used laser ablasion to treat her epilepsy doctor shabbar danish is director of neurosurgery at rwj university hospital doctor kimberly palangio is director of neurophysiology at the university of medical center at princeton and finally liza gundell is deputy director of a terriffic organization called epilepsy foundation of new jersey i want to thank you all for joining us doctor before you go any further and i'm fascinated to find out melissa's history and why she's doing so great right now what is epilepsy? so epilepsy is a disorder of dysfunctional circuits in the brain and basically you know to try to make it there's a lot of different types of epilepsy but in general it's abnormal electrical discharges from the brain that