Dietrich Jehle, MD, FACEP, RDMS serves as Program Director, Professor, and Chair of the UTMB Sealy Department of Emergency Medicine at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, Texas.
Dr. Jehle graduated from the University of Virginia, School of Medicine in 1979 and completed his residency at the University of Pittsburgh in 1982. Dr. Jehle assisted with the development of the Emergency Medicine Residency at Allegheny General Hospital
in Pittsburgh, PA in 1982 and relocated to Buffalo, NY to develop a new Emergency Medicine Residency Program which began in 1994. He served as Vice Chairman of the Department of Emergency Medicine at State University of New York at Buffalo, was the
Clinical Director of the Department of Emergency Medicine at Erie County Medical Center (ECMC) for 17 years, was a Tenured Professor of Emergency Medicine and became the Associate Medical Director for the hospital in 2008. Dr. Jehle was the 2008 recipient
of the Distinguished Physician’s Award for ECMC. In 2009, he was selected as a voting member of the Board of Directors for the Erie County Medical Center. Dr. Jehle was appointed a Board Examiner for the American Board of Emergency Medicine,
served on the Board of the New York Chapter of the American College of Emergency Physicians, was a grant reviewer for the Small Business Innovation and Research Program for the National Institute of Health. He was selected as a Trauma Site Surveyor
for both New York and Illinois. In addition to his significant contributions to the use of ultrasound in Emergency Medicine, he has also been involved in research involving resuscitation, airway management, investigating motor vehicle crashes, and
bringing new technologies to emergency medicine. For 27 years, Dr. Jehle has provided supervision of medical care for game day guests for the Buffalo Bills and has been the on-field airway physician for Buffalo Bills home games. The American College
of Emergency Physicians presented Dr. Jehle with the National Teaching Award in 2000 and the Emergency Ultrasound Award in 2001. In 2007, Buffalo Business First awarded him the “Health Care 50” Award, and The Buffalo News acknowledged
him as “Buffalo Outstanding Citizen of 2009” for his lifesaving efforts in a highway crash that he witnessed. In 2010, NYACEP presented him with the "Advancing Emergency Care" award.
Dr. Jehle has co-authored several leading textbooks on emergency bedside ultrasonography, including “Ultrasound in Emergency Medicine,” the first text in its field in 1995. In 2003, he co-edited “Ultrasonography in Trauma: The FAST Exam”
which was published by the American College of Emergency Physicians. He published the first study on the use of ultrasonography in blunt abdominal trauma by emergency physicians in the United States and the first emergency medicine study of the use
of bedside ultrasound to evaluate gallbladder, aortic, renal, and first-trimester pregnancy pathology. In 2011, Dr. Jehle edited the first emergency eye ultrasound text, “Emergency Ultrasound of the Eye and Orbit”. In his role as Director
of Emergency Ultrasonography, his group created a full-time emergency ultrasound fellowship at SUNY at Buffalo in the 1990s. In addition, academic emergency physicians from all over the United States and Canada have participated in the two-week UB
mini-fellowship in bedside sonography over the last 25 years.
Dr. Jehle’s interest in resuscitation and airway management lead to the first study of head cooling in cardiac arrest in animals and the first study of oximetry in prehospital care utilizing conjunctival oximeters and arterial lines in helicopter
flights. In addition, he founded and organized the first Emergency Medicine study of the use of bougies as an adjunct for intubation in the United States.
His interest in new technologies led to the organizing of the first LCD presentation at a national emergency medicine meeting as Chair of the Technology Committee for the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine (SAEM). Dr. Jehle helped found the SAEM
Ultrasound Interest Group as a spinoff of the technology committee. With Dr. David Ellis, he helped organize one of the busiest emergency telemedicine systems in the country supporting 52 NY State prisons and two NY Federal Penitentiaries in the 1990s.
In January 2016, Dr. Jehle transitioned to assume the role of the Founding Emergency Medicine Residency Director for the Emergency Medicine Residency Program at Grand Strand Medical Center and Clinical Professor of Surgery at the University of South Carolina.
Dr. Jehle served two terms as a Board Member for the South Carolina Chapter of the American College of Emergency Physicians.
Dr. Jehle was recruited as Professor and Chair of the Department of Emergency Medicine and Founding Program Director for the Emergency Medicine Residency at the University of Texas Medical Branch in the summer of 2021. He resides in Galveston,
Texas, and is married with four grown children.
References:
- http://medicine.buffalo.edu/education/mdphd/research_and_facilities/research_highlights.host.html/content/shared/smbs/research_highlights/emergency-ultrasound.detail.html
- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8216513/
- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11421081/
- https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0735675793901647
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3093211/
- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10874235/
- http://www.buffalo.edu/news/releases/2006/10/8236.html
- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20838142/
- https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/emp2.12115