Studying how surgery and critical illness affects the heart
Heart muscle injury during major surgery and intensive care is common. Michelle Chew studies which patients are at risk and how these injuries can be prevented and treated. Meet one of the new professors of Karolinska Institutet who will participate in this year's installation ceremony at Aula Medica on 9 October.
Text: Karin Tideström, for KI’s installation ceremony booklet 2025
What are you researching?
“My research group is studying how the heart and circulatory system are affected by physiological stress related to major surgery or critical illness. Our particular focus is on myocardial injury, that is associated with a higher risk of complications and death. We hope to answer three questions: which patients risk being affected, can myocardial injury be prevented, and how can we treat any injury that has already occurred?”
How are you going about this?
“We’re studying patients who undergo major surgery or who are treated in intensive care units. By gathering information on disease history, cardiac biomarkers and blood circulation and by examining cardiac function using ultrasound we can analyse individual risks and identify patterns at a population level. We hope that combining these data will enable us to identify risk profiles that can pave the way for more targeted and efficacious therapy.”
Why is this important?
“Myocardial injury is common but can be asymptomatic, which makes it hard to detect in time. If we can understand better which patients are at risk, we may be able to find strategies for mitigating cardiovascular stress and prevent complications.”
What are your findings to date, and what’s your next step?
“We’ve already identified certain patient groups at an elevated risk of myocardial injury and have studied their short and long-term consequences. The next step will be to find out if advanced medical imaging such as cardiac ultrasound can help us better identify high-risk patients. By identifying patterns related to elevated risk we hope to find strategies to protect the heart and circulatory system.”
About Michelle Chew
Professor of Anaesthesiology and Intensive Care at the Department Clinical Science, Intervention and Technology
Michelle Chew was born in 1969 in Malaysia and grew up in Australia. She obtained her medical degree from the University of Adelaide in 1994 and went on to further studies at the University of Sydney. She earned her PhD from Aarhus University in Denmark in 2000. From 2016 to 2024 she was professor and academic chair of anaesthesiology, intensive care and emergency medicine at Linköping University. She is currently chair of the cardiodynamics section of the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine and senior editor of three leading medical journals in her field. Michelle Chew was appointed Professor at Karolinska Institutet on 15 August 2024.