During her presidency, the cardiologist plans to implement a tighter integration of heart research and technological developments. “Rapid progress in applications will only be possible if these fields cooperate effectively,” she says. “As a physician, improving the clinical care of patients is my highest priority.” At the moment, one concrete project of the SCMR is to develop criteria for carrying out and evaluating Cardio-MRT examinations. The main focus is to standardize criteria for measuring damage to heart muscle tissue in patients. These standards should serve as guidelines for future technological developments.
To make world-wide progress in the quality of Cardio-MRT, Schulz-Menger also intends to more strongly network national and international activities. One of the many aims of such networks will be to improve the transfer of knowledge to countries which lack infrastructure and technology for medical care in this area. Another central project that she wishes to push forward is the unification of data from cardiovascular MRT in a world-wide register study that the SCMR has been carrying out since 2013. “To date the cohort includes 70,000 participants, and the number will grow,” she says. “This is an incredibly powerful resource for scientific investigations centered on the heart.”
The core of Schulz-Menger’s activities will remain her work as a scientist and doctor, she says. She is currently taking part in a large study of Sudden Cardiac Death, for example. Here the ECRC is in charge of clinically validating the MRT expertise of Germany’s participating research institutes.
Quelle: Pressemitteilung Max-Delbrück-Centrum für Molekulare Medizin in der Helmholtz-Gemeinschaft (MDC)