Dirk Dressler

Dirk Dressler (2020)

Konrad Karl Erich Bodo Wilhelm Dirk Dressler (born July 19, 1958 in Eschwege ) is a German neurologist and psychiatrist . He is a university professor at the Hannover Medical School . His main research interests are neurological movement disorders and the development and introduction of botulinum toxin therapy.

Life

Dirk Dressler studied human medicine and philosophy at the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen and the Harvard Medical School in Boston with a scholarship from the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung . He then went through neurological and psychiatric specialist training at the Georg August University in Göttingen and the Friedrich Alexander University in Erlangen . He is a specialist in neurology and psychiatry in Germany and a GMC registered neurologist and psychiatrist in the UK.

Create

After working for several years at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery and at the Institute of Neurology, Queen Square, London , he returned to Germany in 1998 to take up a position as senior physician at the Neurological Clinic of the University of Rostock . In 2004 he received the Venia legendi with a habilitation thesis on antibody-induced botulinum toxin therapy failure: symptoms, investigation, treatment . In 2008 he accepted a professorship for movement disorders and spasticity at the Neurological Clinic of the Hannover Medical School .

His main areas of work include clinical, pharmacological, neurophysiological, imaging and genetic studies of the central motor function and movement disorders. He is particularly interested in dystonia and spasticity. He is considered one of the pioneers of botulinum toxin therapy in Europe. He is the author of numerous scientific publications on botulinum toxin therapy. He has received awards, teaches at several foreign universities and holds various patents on botulinum toxin therapy.

Dressler is co-founder and co-organizer of the International Congress on Treatment of Dystonia, founding member of the International Neurotoxin Association and co-founder of IAB - Interdisciplinary Working Group on Movement Disorders, the International Parkinson and Movement Disorder Society Special Interest Group on Spasticity, the health network of the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung and von Focus on spasticity, German Spasticity Forum. He is an advisor to various national and international government commissions and was a long-time co-director of We Move, Inc, New York. He is the editor and reviewer of international neurological journals. In addition, he was or is a member of the Medical Advisory Board of the National Spasmodic Torticollis Association, Los Angeles, the Associacao Brasileira de Portadores de Distonias, Sao Paulo, the Fundacion Dystonia, Santiago de Chile, the Neurotoxin Institute, New York, the Swiss Dystonia Society, Basel, the German Dystonia Society e. V., Hamburg, of the Bundesverband Torticollis e. V., Hamm and von Dystonie-und-Du, Karlsruhe. He is a member of various national and international specialist societies and advises international pharmaceutical companies.

Publications (selection)

Dressler wrote 249 scientific articles with a PubMed listing, 58 book chapters and 12 scientific monographs. In addition, he made over 15 scientific films.

The monographs written by Dressler include:

• Botulinum toxin therapy. Thieme, Stuttgart 1995
• Botulinum Toxin Therapy. Thieme Verlag, Stuttgart, New York 2000
• Antibody-induced botulinum toxin therapy failure: symptoms, diagnosis, treatment. Hoffmann-Verlag, Mainz 2005
• Manual of Botulinum Toxin Therapy. 2nd edition. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2013 (with D. Truong, M. Hallett and C. Zachary)
• Treatment of Dystonia. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK 2018 (together with E. Altenmüller and JK Krauss)

Awards

• Doctor honoris causa, Medical University of Sofia, Bulgaria
• University of Santiago de Chile, Chile : Honorary Professorship
• Chinese Botulinum Toxin Society: Lifetime Award
• Symtox - Latin American Botulinum Toxin Association: Lifetime Award
• Japanese Neurotoxin Society: Keynote Lecture
• Chinese Botulinum Toxin Society: Teaching Award
• Tongji University Medical School, Shanghai , China : Teaching Award
• Swiss Society for Dermatology and Venereology
• Swiss Group of Esthetic Dermatology and Skincare: Honorary Member

Visiting professorships

• Sao Paulo University, Brazil
• Monterrey University, Mexico
• Tongji University Medical School, Shanghai , China
• Sechenow University, Moscow , Russia

Web links

• Literature by and about Dirk Dressler in the catalog of the German National Library
• Literature by Dirk Dressler at PubMed

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Medical University - Sofia awarded Prof. Dirk Dressler with the honorary title of Doctor Honoris Causa - Медицински Университет София. Retrieved July 20, 2020 (American English).