Presenter: Dr. Rick Swartz
Topic: ONDRI-on-the-Road
Biography:
Dr. Rick Swartz completed his MD and Ph.D. training and neurology residency at the University of Toronto. His appointments and affiliations include Stroke Neurologist, Sunnybrook Health Science Centre; Assistant Professor, Division of Neurology, Department of Medicine, University of Toronto; directing the Sunnybrook Stroke Research Unit; Medical Director, NE-GTA Regional Stroke Network; and Director, University of Toronto Stroke Program.
As a clinician-scientist, his clinical specialty is stroke neurology, with a focus on stroke in the young, stroke in pregnancy, intracranial vascular diseases, and the functional consequences of stroke including vascular cognitive impairment. His research focuses on improving functional impairment in stroke – from hyperacute clinical trials to long-term complications, with a focus on intracranial vascular diseases including both small vessel disease and the cognitive impact of stroke and neuroimaging biomarkers of intracranial arterial disease.
He developed and validated a rapid, feasible screen for three important post-stroke complications (Depression, Obstructive Sleep Apnea and Cognitive impairment (DOC)). He’s the principal investigator of a multi-center CIHR-funded study screening thousands of stroke clinic patients for DOC conditions to identify people at high risk of long-term adverse outcomes (recurrent stroke, MI, institutionalization and death).
ONDRI:
ONDRI is a provincial-wide research program designed to investigate similarities and differences of dementia among five diseases that will improve the diagnosis and treatment of neurodegeneration. The focus is on diseases that are associated with dementia: Alzheimer’s disease/mild cognitive impairment, Parkinson’s disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease), frontotemporal lobar degeneration, and vascular cognitive impairment (resulting from a stroke). Our mandate is to ensure that the findings from the data collected are transformed into new diagnostic methods that will help detect diseases earlier, improved clinical practice that puts patients first, and eventually new effective treatments that will slow the diseases from progressing or even prevent the disease so people can continue to enjoy the later years of their lives.