Rolf Rossaint

Rolf Rossaint, full professor of Anesthesiology at the RWTH Aachen, has been publishing high quality studies dealing with the treatment of severe acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) for more than 20 years. He was the first to demonstrate that inhaled nitric oxide in patients suffering from ARDS caused a selective pulmonary vasodilation resulting in a decrease of pulmonary artery pressure and an increase in arterial oxygenation. He set up centres for ARDS treatment in Berlin and Aachen, active nationally, which were able to use extracorporeal lung assistance in case all conventional means to maintain gas exchange failed. He aims at the development of implantable lung assist devices in collaboration with the engineering faculties of the RWTH Aachen.

In the last 12 years he has published numerous important experimental and clinical studies dealing with the noble gas Xenon. These studies resulted in the licence to use Xenon as an inhalational anaesthetic. Rolf Rossaint showed that Xenon has not only an anaesthetic effect but is also cardio- and neuroprotective. Furthermore, his experimental work proves that similar neuroprotective effects are associated with the noble gases helium and argon. In the next years he would like to confirm the promising results of his preclinical research in clinical studies.