NCS Research Award 2024 to Helge Skulstad
Previous ProCardio thematic leader, Helge Skulstad, was awarded the 2024 Norwegian Cardiological Society (NCS) Research Award. The award recognizes his 25 years of dedication to cardiovascular research. His work, which spans cardiac ultrasound, hemodynamics, and mechanistic approaches, has made a significant impact on both translational and clinical cardiology. This award highlights his contributions to improving heart disease diagnostics and treatment.
Over the past four years, Helge has been the leader of the Aortic stenosis group at Procardio. His main focus has been on diagnostic precision and automation in the echocardiographic diagnosis of patients with heart disease.
We congratulate Helge with this well deserved prize, and thank him for his significant contributions to research at OUS and ProCardio.
“New insight into the function of normal and ischemic myocardium”
Helge defended his PhD Dr.Med at UiO in 2006, and in his groundbreaking thesis he demonstrated how the heart's regional contraction patterns change shortly after a coronary artery occlusion. He employed the newly developed echocardiographic method Strain to show that postsystolic shortening is an early event in ischemia. In a mechanistic study, he revealed that this phenomenon is due to a delayed contraction in weakened myocardium, which becomes apparent after the ventricular afterload decreases following the end of systole.
Helge has applied this methodological approach further in his research on patients with heart failure, bundle branch block, CRT, and also adults with congenital heart defects. This work has so far resulted in 92 publications.
Research at OUS
The clinical aspects of his research has been carried out at the Department of Cardiology at Rikshospitalet, OUS, where has been head of the section of cardiac imaging for the past 7 year.
Besides his affiliation with ProCardio, Helge has been associated with the Institute for Surgical Research at Oslo University Hospital (OUS) and for the past four years he has led the research group Integrated Cardiovascular Function.
Furthermore, Helge also had a long and close collaboration with the Intervention Center at OUS. There, experimental and clinical studies have been conducted on therapeutic hypothermia and the development of myocardial sensors. In both these areas, Helge has contributed with echocardiographic examination of regional myocardial function and cardiac mechanics.
Professor-qualified
Helge became a specialist in internal medicine in 2000 and cardiology in 2006. He was the head of the cardiac department at Akershus University Hospital (AHUS) during the initiation of the PCI activities there in 2015/16.
He was first evaluated as professor-qualified at UiO in 2012 and at NTNU in 2015. He has served as the main supervisor for three and co-supervisor for six PhD candidates who have defended their theses and he has several ongoing supervision assignments. Helge has been a member of five evaluation committees for PhD candidates.
Since 2016, he has taught medical students at UiO and has been primarily responsible for introducing the use of cardiac ultrasound in medical education.
Helge recently returned to work as a cardiologist at Ahus and we wish him all the best in him new position.
Source: The nomination letter