European Delirium Association 2018
 
Meera Agar
Clinical delirium care: Delirium in palliative care

Professor Meera Agar is Professor of Palliative Medicine, IMPACCT (Improving palliative, aged and chronic care through clinical research and translation) University of Technology Sydney. She is a practicing Palliative Medicine Specialist and the Clinical Trial Director at Liverpool Hospital, a large university teaching hospital in South West Sydney. Her interest is in supportive care of brain impacts of advanced illness on the brain, including delirium, dementia and brain tumors; and she has conducted several clinical trials in this area. She was awarded the European Association for Palliative Care Early Career Researcher award in 2013 for her work in delirium in advanced illness. She is the President of the Australian New Zealand Society of Palliative Medicine, and member of the management committee of the Australasian Delirium Association.

 
Alice Barra
How to improve outcome after delirium: neuromodulation?

Alice Barra is an Italian neuropsychologist based in Belgium, with a Master Degree in Clinical Neuropsychology and Cognitive Neuroscience (University of Padova). She is now pursing a PhD in Biomedical Sciences within the Coma Science Group and the Neurology Department of the University Hospital of Liège.

Her clinical work and research aims at understanding consciousness as well as disorders of consciuosness. She works with transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), transcranial pulsed current stimulation (tPCS) and transcranial magnetic stimulation coupled to electroencephalography (TMS-EEG), using outcome measures such as the Coma Recovery Scale-Revised and EEG.


 
Mark van den Boogaard
Long-term outcomes of delirium: Mortality

Mark van den Boogaard is a senior researcher at the department of Intensive Care Medicine of the Radboud university medical center Nijmegen, the Netherlands. He is leader of the research line: “ICU delirium” with a focus on prediction and prevention. He conducted several multicenter and multinational clinical studies regarding prediction and pharmacological and non-pharmacological prevention. Furthermore, he is project leader of the MONITOR-IC, a large scale multicenter study with a long-term follow-up program measuring quality of life till 5y after ICU admission.

 
Gideon Caplan
Clinical delirium care: Persistent delirium

Caplan is Director of Post Acute Care Services and Director of Geriatric Medicine at Prince of Wales Hospital and an Associate Professor at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. He is also President of the Australasian Delirium Association.
His research involves:
1. developing and rigorously testing new health services, he has been a chief investigator on 6 investigator-initiated RCTs, and
2. the pathophysiology and new treatments of delirium, where he works with a consortium of international investigators.

 
Colm Cunningham
Symposium: Pathophysiology: Metabolic disturbance as a driver for delirium

Dr Cunningham is an Associate Professor in Neuroscience in Trinity College Dublin. His main research interests are in neurodegeneration and neuroinflammation and in the role of microglia in these processes. His research has contributed to understanding how systemic insults such as infection, inflammation, injury and stress interact with, and influence, ongoing brain inflammation. Such responses in the aged or demented incorporate episodes of delirium, an extremely common multi-factorial phenomenon that remains unexplained. He is one of only a few researchers carrying out basic research in delirium and is using novel animal models to study delirium during dementia and sepsis-induced brain damage. Collectively, these avenues are aimed at moving towards defining the role of activated microglia in dementia, while considering the impact of systemic infections on these conditions.

 
Daniel Davis
Delirium research: How to proceed (1)?: Epidemiology & Biostatistics

Daniel Davis is a geriatrician and epidemiologist. After qualifying from the University of Edinburgh, he undertook postgraduate training in Oxford, Cambridge and London. Since 2015, he has been a Senior Clinical Researcher at UCL and is PI of the Delirium and Population Health Informatics Cohort (DELPHIC). DELPHIC is unique in its aim of tracking cognitive changes before, during and after acute illness in a population-representative sample of individuals aged 70-100+.

 
Edwin van Dellen
Delirium research: How to proceed (2)?: Functional imaging

Dr Edwin van Dellen is clinical research fellow and resident in psychiatry at UMC Utrecht, The Netherlands, and honorary fellow at the Melbourne Neuropsychiatry Centre, University of Melbourne, Australia. He received his MD from the University of Amsterdam (2012) and his PhD in neurology and clinical neurophysiology from VU University Amsterdam, The Netherlands (2013). He subsequently worked as postdoctoral fellow at the VUmc Alzheimer Center and University Medical Center Utrecht departments of intensive care medicine and psychiatry. His research is focused on disturbed brain activity and connectivity in delirium and other neuropsychiatric diseases.

 
John Devlin
ICU delirium: Reducing delirium through application of the 2018 SCCM PADIS guidelines

John W. Devlin, PharmD, FCCM, FCCP is a professor of pharmacy at Northeastern University and a member of the scientific staff in the Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine at Tufts Medical Center, Boston, MA. He directs a critical care pharmacy fellowship/PhD program that is currently training its 7th candidate. His federally-funded clinical research program, focused on the detection, prevention and treatment of delirium in the ICU, has received well over $ 1 million in support and generated more than 150 publications. He is a member of the editorial boards of both Critical Care Medicine and Pharmacotherapy and the current president of the American Delirium Society.

 
Wes Ely
Keynote lecture: Delirium in the ICU

Dr. Ely is a subspecialist in Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine who conducts patient-oriented, health services research as a Professor of Medicine in the Division of Allergy, Pulmonary, and Critical Care Medicine at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. He is also a practicing intensivist with a focus on Geriatric ICU Care, as the Associate Director for Research for the VA Tennessee Valley Geriatric Research and Education Clinical Center. Dr. Ely’s research has focused on improving the care and outcomes of critically ill patients with ICU-acquired brain disease (manifested acutely as delirium and chronically as long-term cognitive impairment). He has built the ICU Delirium and Cognitive Impairment Study Group, amassing several thousand patients into cohort studies and randomized trials that were used to build the methodology for ICU acquired brain disease research. His team developed the primary tool (CAM-ICU, translated into 30+ languages) by which delirium and health-related quality of life outcomes are measured in ICU-based trials and clinically at the bedside in ICUs worldwide. Dr. Ely has been continuously federally funded (NIA and/or VA) for 15 years. He has over 350 peer-reviewed publications and over 50 published book chapters and editorials.

 
Tim Girard
ICU delirium: Should delirium be treated with antipsychotics? Results of the MIND Study

Timothy D. Girard, MD, MSCI, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Critical Care Medicine and a member of the CRISMA (Clinical Research, Investigation, and Systems Modeling of Acute Illnesses) Center at the University of Pittsburgh. His research program seeks to understand and enhance long-term recovery from critical illness with a specific focus on cognitive impairment due to critical illness; delirium and sedation in the ICU; and liberation from mechanical ventilation.

 
Willem van Gool
Clinical delirium care: Delirium superimposed on dementia
Pim (W.A.) van Gool is professor of neurology, especially the dementias. He combines an academic affiliation in the AMC (Amsterdam) with the Presidency of the Health Council of the Netherlands (Den Haag) and a role as consultant in psychogeriatric mental health care in Dijk en Duin (Castricum). He has been the PI in several large randomised controlled. In the AMC his research group focuses on vascular factors in dementia and prevention of cognitive decline. The ‘Dijk en Duin’ neuropsychiatry research group studies clinical characteristics and aetiology of delirium superimposed on dementia.
 
Michael Heneka
Keynote lecture: Sepsis and the brain

Michael Heneka studied medicine in Tübingen, Lausanne and London from 1990-1996.
He obtained his medical degree at the Institute of Pharmacology for which he received the 1998 Attempto Award of the University of Tübingen. He started his clinical residency in neurology at the Dept. of Neurology of the Univ. of Tübingen in 1996 and joined the Dept. of Neurology at the University of Bonn in 1999.
After his clinical board examination (2002) and habilitation (2003) he took the chair as professor for molecular neurology at the University of Münster in 2004. In 2008 he was appointed professor for clinical neurosciences at the University of Bonn heading the DFG Clinical Research Unit 177.
Since 2010 Prof. Heneka has served as neurological director of the joint memory clinic of the Departments of Psychiatry and Neurology. Since 2016 acts as director of the Dept. of Neurodegenerative Disease and Geriatric Psychiatry. His scientific interest is focussing on the role of innate and adaptive immune mechanisms for neurological disorders.
Beyond his research, Michael Heneka serves as Associate Editor of Neurology: Neuroinflammation and Neuroimmunology and editorial board member of Molecular Neurobiology, Journal of Neurochemistry and Alzheimer Research&Therapy. He is the organizing chair of the biennial conference “Venusberg Meeting on Neuroinflammation”. In 2011 he received the Christa Lorenz Award for ALS Research and in 2013 the Hans und Ilse Breuer Award for Alzheimer Research.

 
Elly Hol
Symposium: Pathophysiology: Neuroinflammation and delirium: a role for astrocytes

Elly Hol is a neurobiologist and a professor of “Glia biology of brain diseases”. She is principal investigator at the department of Translational Neuroscience, Brain Center Rudolf Magnus, University Medical Center Utrecht. Her research is focused on the role of glial cells in brain diseases, including Alzheimer’s disease, stroke, schizophrenia, and glioma (www.ellyhollab.eu). The overall aim is to elucidate the molecular and functional changes in glia that contribute to the pathogenesis of these diseases. She is studying glial cells in human post-mortem brain tissue, human cell models, and in mouse models for brain diseases.

 
Ramona Hopkins
Long-term outcomes of delirium: Depression, anxiety and PTSD

Dr. Hopkins is a professor of Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience and Director of the Neuroscience Center at Brigham Young University and Clinical Research Investigator in Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at Intermountain Medical Center. Dr. Hopkins earned her doctorate degree from the University of Utah in Psychology specializing in memory and neuropsychological and neuroimaging. Dr. Hopkins’ research focuses on long-term outcomes (e.g. cognitive, neuroimaging, psychiatric disorders, and quality of life) following critical illness and in patients with pulmonary disorders. Dr. Hopkins has received NIH funding to study outcomes following critical illness. Dr. Hopkins has written or co-authored more than 200 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters.

 
Jan Pieter Konsman
Symposium: Pathophysiology: Systemic inflammation increases water diffusion in the absence of blood-brain barrier breakdown

My research focuses on unraveling the neuroimmune mechanisms underlying anorexia and apathy during systemic inflammation and to determine candidate mechanisms involved in sepsis-associated encephalopathy. In addition to classical neuroanatomical and pharmacological approaches, I have recently set up an integrated imaging approach consisting of different modalities of in vivo magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and post mortem histology in small animal models of sepsis.

 
Alasdair MacLullich
How to improve outcome after delirium?: Improved management of delirium?

Alasdair MacLullich trained in medicine and psychology at the University of Edinburgh. He was Clinical Lecturer in Geriatric Medicine, then MRC Clinician Scientist Fellow before becoming Professor of Geriatric Medicine at the University of Edinburgh in 2009. His main research interests are the neuropsychology and pathophysiology of delirium. He has developed new delirium assessment tools such as the 4AT and the DelApp, and has an active programme of work on cerebrospinal fluid biomarkers of inflammation and brain injury in patients with delirium. 
Alasdair MacLullich’s clinical work is in acute geriatric medicine and acute orthogeriatrics. He is also active in delirium education and quality improvement work. He co-founded the European Delirium Association in 2006.

 
0Jose Maldonado
Delirium education and societal impact: Legal implications of delirium
 
Koen Milisen
Delirium education and societal impact: Quality improvement: how to change practice?

Koen Milisen (PhD, RN) was trained as a health scientist and as a nurse. He is full Professor of Care for Older Persons at the Department of Public Health and Primary Care, KU Leuven (Belgium) and Clinical Nurse Scientist at the Division of Geriatric Medicine at the University Hospitals of Leuven (Belgium). He has extensive clinical, teaching and research expertise in the care for frail older persons. More specifically his work focuses on delirium, falls and restraint use; and on the development of geriatric care models. Dr. Milisen is president of the Flemish Center of Expertise for Falls and Fracture Prevention, president of the UZ Leuven Delirium Working Group, council member of the European Delirium Association and section editor of BMC Geriatrics. Dr. Milisen has published over 180 papers in peer-reviewed journals. Full publication list available at: https://lirias.kuleuven.be/cv?u=U0011583

 
Alessandro Morandi
Delirium education and societal impact: Postgraduate education on delirium across Europe

Dr Alessandro Morandi is a geriatric consultant in the Department of Rehabilitation of the Fondazione Teresa Camplani (Cremona, Italy). He is the current president of the European Delirium Association and a worldwide delirium expert. He has lead several research studies on delirium in critically ill patients and rehabilitation settings. His current focus is on delirium superimposed on dementia.

 
Leiv Otto Watne
Delirium research: How to proceed (1)?: Why is it so hard to find a biomarker of delirium?

Leiv Otto Watne is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Oslo University Hospital and the leader of Oslo Delirium Research Group at the University of Oslo. His main research interest is human CSF/blood studies in delirium.
Contact: l.o.watne@gmail.com. Twitter : lowatne

 
Valerie Page
Delirium research: How to proceed (1)?: Development of core outcome sets for effectiveness trials

Valerie Page is a Consultant in Critical Care at Watford General Hospital. She is the UK clinical leader in ICU delirium and hands-on clinical trialist having been the Chief Investigator on two interventional delirium RCTs in ICU patients. She is a key member of the international initiative to develop core outcome sets (COS) for delirium research. She is author of a number of original research papers, reviews, editorials and clinical handbook “Delirium in Critical Illness”. Dr Page is a committee member of the European Delirium Association, and an Honorary Senior Clinical Lecturer at Imperial College and University of Hertfordshire.

 
Pratik Pandharipande
Long-term outcomes of delirium: Cognitive decline

Dr. Pandharipande is a Professor of Anesthesiology and Surgery at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, TN. His research focus is in ICU-associated brain injury (manifested acutely as delirium and chronically as cognitive impairment) and in improving survivorship . He has conducted seminal studies evaluating the role of sedation in these brain dysfunction outcomes. He is also involved in a number of projects related to understanding the pathophysiology of delirium including inflammation, amino acid perturbation and endothelial dysfunction. Along with co-investigators, his group is attempting to better understand the epidemiology of delirium in varied clinical groups (cardiovascular ICU, trauma/burn ICU and, pediatric ICU).

 
Joseph Rasimas
New-Old Approaches to Delirium: Integrating Detection, Pharmacology and Therapy

Dr. Rasimas has an educational background from Mayo Clinic and the National Institutes of Health with training in Consultation – Liaison psychiatry, bioethics, and clinical research. J.J. is now the Director of C – L Psychiatry at Hennepin County Medical Center in Minneapolis, where he also practices clinical ethics. He is also a critical care toxicologist who uses this expertise in the care and research of patients with delirium. Dr. Rasimas is pursuing an academic medical career at the interface of psychosomatic medicine, medical toxicology, bioethics, and psychoanalysis with primary clinical interests in the phenomenology of suicide and psychological experiences of acute hospital care.

 
Robert Sanders
Delirium research: How to proceed (2)?: Integrating immunology and network science

Dr. Robert D. Sanders is Assistant Professor of Anesthesiology, Chair of Research & Development Committee and Chair of the Anesthesiology and Critical Care Trials and Interdisciplinary Outcomes Network (ACTION) at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, USA. His research is devoted to improving perioperative outcomes through translational research paradigms and clinical trials focused on the pathogenesis of, and long-term outcomes following, delirium. Dr. Sanders benefits from NIH funding through his K23 and the University of Wisconsin Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center.

 
0Tarek Sharshar
Symposium: Pathophysiology: Amydala dysfunction in critical illness
 
Yoanna Skrobik
ICU delirium: Pharmacological and non-pharmacological prevention of delirium

Professor of Medicine; Chair, Lise et Jean Saine critical care chair, Université de Montréal; Chercheur Boursier Clinicien, McGill University; Professor, Queens University
Yoanna Skrobik MD, FRCP(c), MSc (pharmacology) is an internist and intensivist. Her expertise includes analgesia, sedation and delirium. She studies preventive and therapeutic pharmacologic interventions, specifically analgesics and sedatives, and their relationship to cognition. Her current research integrates pharmacological exposure, frailty, acute illness determinants, and rehabilitation, within a framework of patient centered outcomes. She co-authored the Society of Critical Care Medicine’s 2013 Pain, Anxiety, and Delirium Intensive Care guidelines, the SCCM’s 2017 Family-Centered Care in the Neonatal, Pediatric and Adult Intensive Care Unit guidelines, and was Committee Vice Chair for the 2018 Pain, Agitation, Delirium, Immobility and Sleep SCCM guidelines.

 
0Claudia Spies
ICU delirium: Intraoperative monitoring and postoperative delirium
 
Robert Stevens
Delirium research: How to proceed (2)?: Structural imaging
Dr. Stevens is a Professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, with appointments in Anesthesiology Critical Care Medicine, Neurology, and Radiology. He is a Research Faculty in the Johns Hopkins Institute for Computational Medicine and the Institute for Cell Engineering. Dr Stevens’ research lies at the intersection between intensive care, neuroscience, and computational medicine. His aim is to discover and validate signatures at different scales associated with acute organ injury and post-injury recovery, as a step towards establishing data-driven individualized therapies for critically ill patients. Dr Stevens’ research is supported via grants from the NIH, DOD, and European Union.
 
Zoë Tieges
How to improve outcome after delirium?: Cognitive rehabilitation?

Dr Zoë Tieges is a psychologist with training in cognitive and psychophysiological research methods (University of Amsterdam, PhD). In 2010, she joined the Edinburgh Delirium Research Group in Scotland. Her research focuses on developing novel assessment methods in delirium and neuropsychological approaches to improve understanding of its symptom profile. Along with Prof Alasdair MacLullich, she co-leads a UK Medical Research Council-funded project to develop a software app for assessing delirium in general and ICU patients. In 2017 she received the NIDUS Junior Investigator Pilot Award to investigate the contribution of severity of delirium domains to patient outcomes.

 
0Roos Vandenbroucke
Symposium: Pathophysiology: An essential role for the blood-cerebrospinal fluid barrier in neuroinflammation