PhD degree for Anja Raab

Anja Raab successfully defended her thesis entitled "Respiratory complications in spinal cord injury and the potential for reduction".

Outline of this thesis
The medical community is making great progress in the treatment of persons with spinal cord injury. Despite this, respiratory complications are still the leading cause of morbidity and mortality in persons with spinal cord injury today. Individuals with paralysis from the neck down are especially at risk, as the respiratory muscles can no longer function properly. This thesis offers interesting insights into the themes surrounding respiratory complications after spinal cord injury and is another relevant step in better understanding the treatment of these complications. New information has been found on the occurrence of pneumonia, predictive factors for respiratory complications and lesion-specific reference values in spinal cord injury patients. Furthermore, the studies in this thesis are mainly about respiratory muscle training and investigated the effectiveness for increases in respiratory muscle strength and lung volumes and thus offered new insights for an optimal training regime. Finally, this thesis also addresses the spinal cord injury specific issues related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Biography
Anja Raab (1980) studied physiotherapy and successfully completed these studies in 2002. In 2013 she obtained her master's degree (University of Bern). The research in this thesis was conducted in the CTU group at the Swiss Paraplegia Center in Nottwil. Currently Anja Raab works as coordinator for health sciences at the University in Bern.

Click here to access Anja's thesis digitally.