Dr. Jeffrey L. Saver, professor of neurology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and director of the UCLA Stroke Center, received the William Feinberg Award for Excellence in Clinical Stroke at the American Stroke Association's 2012 International Stroke Conference in New Orleans on Feb. 2.
The Feinberg Award recognizes a Stroke Council Fellow actively involved in patient-based research who has made significant contributions to clinical stroke research.
Saver, a stroke physician and scientist for nearly 20 years, has been a principal investigator or co-investigator in numerous national and international trials spanning a spectrum of stroke care.
He has made many pioneering contributions including advancing the pre-hospital identification and treatment of stroke; modernizing the definition of transient ischemic attack; developing methods to analyze the whole range of post-stroke deficits in clinical trials; showing that rapid restoration of blood flow can reverse acute stroke brain injury; and developing clot retrieval devices to reopen blocked cerebral arteries in acute stroke.
Saver's masterwork may be as the principal investigator of National Institute of Health FAST-MAG trial in which paramedics are giving potentially brain protective magnesium to patients within the first minutes after stroke onset.
In addition, Saver has trained more than 20 neurology fellows and created the UCLA Visiting Scholars Program for international vascular neuroscientists to perform clinical research within the UCLA Stroke Center.
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