Peter Lindholm MD, PhD

Peter Lindholm, MD, Ph.D. is Professor in Residence, Gurnee Endowed Chair of Hyperbaric and Diving Medicine Research, Department of Emergency Medicine, University of California San Diego. He is a radiologist (licensed in Sweden), an associate professor in physiology and radiology from the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden. He has also served as director of thoracic radiology at the Karolinska University Hospital. His research interest is in the field of diving and hyperbaric medicine with a focus on the pathophysiology of breath-hold diving.

He has published studies on hypoxia and loss of consciousness as well as the pulmonary effects of lung squeeze. He has described the physiology of how glossopharyngeal breathing extends the amount of gas in the lungs beyond total lung capacity, including the first case series suggesting cerebral arterial gas embolism from glossopharyngeal insufflation lung packing. He published the first study suggesting “tracheal squeeze” as an alternative to pulmonary edema in divers bleeding after deep dives. He has shown that exercise and fasting prior to diving increase the risk of loss of consciousness similar to hyperventilation. He has also developed a new method to use magnetic resonance imaging to diagnose pulmonary embolism. The current focus is on immersion pulmonary edema and lung squeeze, as well as new methods to measure hyperbaric oxygen therapy.