Emma Rosenkrantz Hölmich

My research focuses on the physiological stress response that occurs in a patient when they undergo surgery. I am primarily occupied with the perioperative period and the patho-physiological mechanisms that highly affect patient recovery aftersurgery. My Ph.D. focuses on the use of a parameter called heart rate variability (HRV) as a biomarker of cardiac autonomic activity and indirectly as a measure of the surgical stress response. We are investigating whether HRV reflects patient reported recovery and if we can use it to predict clinical outcomes. I also take a deep dive into the immunological changes that occur in relation to surgery and try to map associations between HRV and inflammatory activities.