Louis C. Argenta, M.D., William T. Carpenter, M.D., and Caryl J. Guth, M.D., have been recognized with awards from the Medical Alumni Association (MAA) of the Wake Forest University School of Medicine.
The MAA honored Argenta with its Distinguished Faculty Award, Carpenter with its Distinguished Achievement Award and Guth with its Distinguished Service Award during a ceremony on Sept. 30.
Argenta, a resident of Winston-Salem, joined Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center in 1988, as the founding chairman of the Department of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery. Under his guidance, the department has become recognized as one of America’s best. Techniques that he helped develop are now used around the world for breast, facial, scalp and other reconstructive surgeries. In 1989, he co-invented Vacuum Assisted Closure (VAC) to treat difficult wounds and burns, which has been used on more than three million people and is estimated to have prevented 200,000 amputations. He and his family also traditionally have devoted a month a year to providing medical care to children in the Third World, establishing hospitals and orphanages in remote underserved areas, and providing care in more than 25 countries.
Carpenter, a 1962 graduate of the School of Medicine and a resident of Columbia, Md., is professor of Psychiatry and Pharmacology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, where he has directed the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center since 1977. He has worked on schizophrenia and psychiatric research projects with the World Health Organization and National Institute of Mental Health, and has been honored for research achievements with awards from leading national and international organizations. He is listed as one of the world’s most cited authors by the Institute for Scientific Information, which placed him among the top one-half of one percent of all publishing researchers of the last two decades. He was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, and was recognized by peers as one of the Best Doctors in America from 1992-2008.
Guth, a 1962 graduate of the School of Medicine and a resident of Advance, N.C., graduated from Mars Hill College and Wake Forest University before pursuing a medical career in anesthesiology. She served as chair of the Department of Anesthesiology at Mills-Peninsula Hospitals in San Mateo, Calif., and distinguished herself in leadership positions with the San Mateo County Medical Association, the American Society of Anesthesiologists, the California Medical Association and the California Society of Anesthesiologists. She has served on the Wake Forest MAA Board for the past 11 years and as president in 2005-06. She has remained involved in patient care and advocacy issues, promoting the integration of holistic concepts into medical practice. In 2002, her philanthropic gift to Wake Forest Baptist endowed the Caryl J. Guth Chair for Holistic and Integrative Medicine, which led to the founding of the Center for Integrative Medicine.
Media Relations
Eric Whittington: ewhittin@wakehealth.edu, 336-716-5318
Lisa Davanzo: news@wakehealth.edu, 336-713-4587