André Rudolph

Since 2021, I have been working as a PhD student in in the Marie Wahren-Herlenius group in parallel to my clinical work as a paediatric cardiologist. 

My main work is on Kawasaki disease (KD). This is a rare condition in children, caused most likely by an infectious trigger against a background of individual genetic susceptibility. It causes aneurysms which are most dangerous in the coronary arteries, where KD can lead to acute infarction or chronic stenosis with myocardial infaction later in life. If left untreated, 25% of children experience this outcome. Thanks to modern treatments, this outcome has been vastly reduced, but cases of giant aneurysms still occur in Sweden and have to be treated with anticoagulation and sometimes, coronary artery bypass grafting. My work focuses on epidemiology with registry work as well as clinical studies and genetics. 

Besides KD, I am interested in other inflammatory cardiac conditions such as myocarditis, and pediatric arrhythmias, which overlap with each other, for example in (congenital) AV-block which has to be treated by pacemaker implantation, or in inflammatory cardiac substrates causing arrhythmias. 

I teach regularly in different contexts, such as medical students, associated professionals, trainees and specialists and hold talks at national and international scientific conferences.