Ola Didrik Saugstad
|
Professor Ola Didrik Saugstad MD, PhD |
|
|---|---|
| Born | 5 March 1947 |
| Nationality | Norwegian |
| Fields | Medicine (pediatrics, neonatology) |
| Institutions | University of Oslo |
| Alma mater | University of Oslo |
| Doctoral advisor | Gösta Rooth |
| Known for | Research on resuscitation of newborn children |
Ola Didrik Saugstad (born 5 March 1947) is a Norwegian pediatrician and neonatologist noted for his research on resuscitation of newborn children and his contribution to reduce child mortality. Since 1991, he has been Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Oslo and Director of the Department of Pediatric Research at Oslo University Hospital, Rikshospitalet.
He is a "world renowned expert in neonatal medicine", particularly on hypoxia and purine metabolism, hypoxia-reoxygenation injury, the effect and mechanisms of oxygen radicals in the neonatal period, mechanisms of lung injury and newborn resuscitation. In 2010, international guidelines for newborn resuscitation were amended, based on the research of Saugstad and his colleagues, to recommend the use of air in place of pure oxygen, a discovery that is estimated to save the lives of 200,000 newborn children each year. He is an advisor to the World Health Organization on child mortality. According to the NRK, Saugstad is "the most internationally recognized and most widely cited Norwegian pediatrician of all times."
Saugstad received the 2012 Nordic Medical Prize, is a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters and became a Knight First Class of the Order of St. Olav in 2010.
He graduated with the cand. med. degree at the University of Oslo in 1973, and worked as a research fellow at Uppsala University Hospital in Sweden and Rikshospitalet in Norway. At Uppsala, his supervisor was Gösta Rooth, who introduced him to perinatal medicine and especially to intrauterine asphyxia, which culminated in Saugstad's doctoral dissertation in 1977, Hypoxanthine as an Indicator of Hypoxia, and which would become his major research interest. From 1980 to 1981 he was a Fogarty International Fellow at the Department of Neonatology of the University of California, San Diego, in the unit of the legendary professor Louis Gluck, known as the father of neonatology.
...
Wikipedia