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Professional profile/background:
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Educated in Norway, moved to UK in 1998
Current Position: Professor of Neonatal Neuroscience University
of Bristol and Hon Consultant Neonatologist, St Michael's
Hospital
St Michael's Hospital and the University of Bristol has
pioneered new treatments for brain injury in babies since Marianne
Thoresen first started cooling babies in 1998, showing that cooling
babies after a lack of oxygen could reduce damage in the newborn
brain. Clinical trials of cooling have now proven that mild cooling
by only a few degrees for 72 hours is a safe and beneficial
treatment. However, cooling only partially reduces disability and
does not prevent it in all babies. The search has been to find a
second treatment that could be added to cooling to further reduce
disability. From 2010 to 2011, for the first time in the world,
fourteen cooled infants at St Michael's Hospital took part in a
study examining whether xenon could be delivered safely and without
side effects. This was carried out successfully enabling ethical
approval for the current study comparing xenon and cooling with the
standard of cooling therapy on its own.
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