Kliniken &… Kliniken Neurologische… Neurologie und… Forschung Vascular… Senior…

Senior Professorship

OVERVIEW

The Senior Professorship for Neurology was awarded to Prof. Werner Hacke as the first of it´s kind by the Faculty for Medicine at the Ruprecht-Karls-University in Heidelberg. He took this position on  October 1st, 2014, immediately after retiring from his Full Professorship in Neurology and the chair of the Department of Neurology, which he had held for more than 27 years.

He is still active in the field of clinical trials for acute stroke, several of them ongoing. He was a member of the steering committee of the SWIFT-PRIME trial, one of the 5 positive thrombectomy trials published in the last 2 years. He was the senior author of the DESTINY II trial, also published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2014 (see figure). He is the Co-Chair of the Thrombolysis Trialists Consortium and was also the senior author of their landmark single patient data metaanalysis published in the Lancet in 2014.

Together with Peter Ringleb, he steers the ECASS 4 Extend study, an investigator initiated MR driven study on thrombolysis in later time windows. He was also member of the steering committee of two recently finalized and presented studies, INCH (reversal of INR in patients with intracerebral bleeds associated with Vit-K antagonist anticoagulation and SIESTA, a randomized trial comparing general anesthesia and conscious sedation in patients undergoing thrombectomy.

Immediately after his retirement, he organized the 12th "Thrombolysis and Thrombectomy in Acute Stroke" Conference with more than 400 participants as his clinical farewell symposium. In addition, he became the President elect of the World Stroke Organization in 2014 and will take over the Presidency of the WSO in October 2016. He was responsible for the general organization of the World Stroke Conferences for the past 4 congresses and the forthcoming WSC in Hyderabad, India. In 2016, he received another honorary doctorate given by the University of Debrecen in Hungary and became the first Neurologist ever to be awarded the honorary membership of the German Neurosurgical Society.

Further clinical studies for acute treatment and prevention of ischemic stroke are in preparation, details are however still under confidentiality.

Functional Outcome after Hemicraniectomy and after Conservative Treatment Alone According to the Modified Rankin Score. The primary end point was survival without severe disability, defined as a score of 0 to 4 on the modified Rankin scale (range, 0 to 6, with 0 indicating no symptoms and 6 indicating death). The results shown are the probability estimates for all patients who underwent randomization (the intention-to-treat population). Panel A shows the bias-corrected distribution of scores on the modified Rankin scale at 6 months. Panel B shows the raw distribution of Rankin scores at 12 months.

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

  • Gumbinger C, Reuter B, Stock C, Sauer T, Wiethölter H, Bruder I, Rode S, Kern R, Ringleb P, Hennerici MG, Hacke W. Time to treatment with recombinant tissue plasminogen activator and outcome of stroke in clinical practice: retrospective analysis of hospital quality assurance data with comparison with results from randomised clinical trials. BMJ 2014; 348: 3429
  • Emberson J, Lees KR, Lyden P, Blackwell L, Albers G, Bluhmki E, Brott T, Cohen G, Davis S, Donnan G, Grotta J, Howard G, Kaste M, Koga M, von Kummer R, Lansberg M, Lindley RI, Murray G, Olivot JM, Parsons M, Tilley B, Toni D, Toyoda K, Wahlgren N, Wardlaw J, Whiteley W, del Zoppo GJ, Baigent C, Sandercock P, Hacke W. Effect of treatment delay, age, and stroke severity on the effects of intravenous thrombolysis with alteplase for acute ischaemic stroke: a meta-analysis of individual patient data from randomised trials. LANCET 2014; 384: 1929-1935
  • Hacke, W. Interventional Thrombectomy for Major Stroke - A Step in the Right Direction. NEW ENGLAND JOURNAL OF MEDICINE 2015; 372: 76-77
  • Steiner T, Poli S, Griebe M, Hüsing J, Hajda J, Freiberger A, Bendszus M, Bösel J, Christensen H, Dohmen C, Hennerici M, Kollmer J, Stetefeld H, Wartenberg KE, Weimar C, Hacke W, Veltkamp R. Fresh frozen plasma versus prothrombin complex concentrate in patients with intracranial haemorrhage related to vitamin K antagonists (INCH): a randomized trial. LANCET NEUROLOGY  2016, 15:566-573
  • Schönenberger S, Uhlmann L, Hacke W....et al. Effect of Conscious Sedation vs General Anesthesia on Early Neurological Improvement Among Patients With Ischemic Stroke Undergoing Endovascular Thrombectomy. A Randomized Clinical Trial. JAMA 2016; 316: 1986-1996