Jacob Hollenberg

Professor of Cardiology specialising in Intensive Care

Head of Centre for Resuscitation Science (Karolinska Instiutet)

Senior Consultant, Cardiology, Internal Medicine, Intensive Care (Södersjukhuset)

As the director of the Center for Resuscitation Science at at Karolinska Institutet, I am responsible for a number of clinical studies that aim to improve the care of cardiac arrest patients.

For 20 years, our research group has been studying new methods and data on patients suffering from cardiac arrest. Several of our previous studies have been published in journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, Circulation, European Heart Journal and Intensive Care Medicine. We are also proud that some of our research has had a direct impact on treatment guidelines around the world, such as our studies on fire department and police dispatch in the event of cardiac arrest, simplified CPR, SMS lifesaving and hypothermia treatment. On a personal level, this becomes very concrete when patients who are admitted to the hospital after cardiac arrest and who I treat in my clinical role as a physician at MIVA (medical intensive care unit) at Södersjukhuset have had the chance to receive new treatments methods that we have previously developed and studied in our research.

The very poor prognosis is one of the strongest driving forces for me and the goal of the research program is to increase survival after sudden cardiac arrest. I have the great privilege of leading a research group with 25-30 extremely talented researchers, doctors, nurses and statisticians. The group also includes colleagues from all over Sweden and we conduct several national and international studies and collaborations.

Our current research program consists of about 10 comprehensive projects that include the entire treatment chain from the home to the ambulance and on to the hospital's emergency and intensive care units. In the research, we originate from clinical knowledge gaps and investigate whether new technology and innovation can improve the chance of survival but also whether established treatments can be applied to new areas of use.

We conduct studies where we evaluate, among other things, whether a new world-unique custom-built defibrillator drone and SMS lifesaving can shorten the time to defibrillation and affect survival. We also study whether a simplified cardiopulmonary resuscitation method with only chest compressions is as good as traditional cardiopulmonary resuscitation, whether cooling of cardiac arrest patients' brains can improve survival, whether new drugs for cardiac arrest are effective, whether ECMO treatment can save lives in cardiac arrest and if artificial intelligence can increase the recognition of cardiac arrest at the alarm center.

Cardiac arrest outside hospitals affects 10, 000 Swedes annually. Today, only 1 in 10 survive. The overall purpose of our research is to make more people survive.

In addition to my role as a researcher, I work as a senior consultant in cardiology and intensive care at the Medical Intensive Care Unit at Södersjukhuset and work as the scientific chair of the Swedish CPR Council.