LECTURERS

Dr. Martinez-Majander

Dr. Martinez-Majander is a neurologist at the Department of Neurology, Helsinki University Hospital. He’s chairing the ESO Membership Committee and is a member of the ESO Guideline Board. In 2019, Dr. Martinez-Majander also graduated from the ESO European Master in Stroke Medicine Programme (Danube University Krems, Austria) and in 2023 from the Evidence-Based Health Care Programme (University of Oxford). His PhD focused on risk factors and long-term outcome in early-onset cryptogenic stroke. 

Geert Verheyden

Geert Verheyden is a physiotherapist and professor at the Department of Rehabilitation Sciences at KU Leuven. He specializes in neuro- and stroke rehabilitation, having obtained his PhD on the topic of trunk impairment after stroke from KU Leuven in 2006. 

From 2006 to 2010, Geert was a postdoctoral researcher at the stroke rehabilitation research center at the University of Southampton (UK). He then co-initiated the first German independent BSc program in physiotherapy at the Applied University of Health Sciences in Bochum (Germany) from 2010 to 2011. 

Since 2011, Geert has been the stroke rehabilitation research lead at KU Leuven, steering a research team of currently one postdoc and 5 PhD researchers, and two research assistants into sensorimotor deficits and assessment, recovery, and rehabilitation in the upper limb after stroke. 

Together with Margit Alt Murphy (Sweden), Geert has co-chaired two initiatives initiated by the European Stroke Organisation (ESO); to develop a definition for motor rehabilitation after stroke and accompanying framework (published in European Stroke Journal in 2023), and most recently the development of the first ESO guidelines for motor rehabilitation after stroke. 

Anders Sode West

Work 

I work full time as a Stroke doctor at the acute stroke unit at University Hospital Rigshospitalet.  

where I also handle IVT and EVT patients. I am also involved in post stroke neurorehabilitation, where I also have my research interest. 

I live in Copenhagen, Denmark and I have 4 children and a wife who is an anesthesiologist. 

Research interests: 

I am interested in post stroke complications, why they occur and the multiple effects it can have on the human body mentally and physiologically.  

I have been involved in research during the last 10 years on post stroke complications, especially regarding sleep disturbances after stroke, circadian disturbances in relation to stroke, post stroke depression + anxiety, and post stroke fatigue. In our group we are also focused on the impact strokes have on our metabolism, including the coagulation system. 

One of our achievements was to demonstrate that circadian light during admission for post stroke rehabilitation, seems to improve post stroke complications regarding depression, fatigue, anxiety and levels of melatonin and cortisol.