Symposium for Professor Halfdan Ihlen

A symposium with the title "Echocardiography- the new stethoscope" was held at Rikshospitalet on Mach 19th in conjunction with professor Halfdan Ihlen's retirement. Over many decades professor Ihlen has been one of the leading profiles within cardiology. He also is one of the true pioneers in the development of-, and clinial use of non-invasive echocardiography both at Rikshospitalet and internationally. He established per-operative echocardiography in cardiac surgery at Rikshospitalet, leading to a permanent collaboration between cardiologists and cardiac surgons. His impressing research merits includes 139 scientific papers, supervision of 9 PhD's, co-supervision of another 16 PhD's, and a large number of scientific presentations nationally and internationaly. Many of professor Ihlen's publications are published in top-rated journals, including Cardiology. Halfdan Ihlen held a professorate at the Interventional Centre, Faculty of Medicine, University of Oslo from 2002-2008. At the symposium the vital professor Ihlen summarised the development in echocardiography over the last three decades. The rest of the Symposium programme was on the level of any state-of-the-art conference in cardiology.

Colleagues from the Depatment of Cardiology presented state of the art material including heart valve failure diagnostics, transoesophageal echocardiography, stress echocardiography, echocardiography in congenital heart failure, per-, and post-operative paricardial accelerometry, 3D echocardiography, Tissue and strain doppler. 6 young researchers presented highlights from their research supervised by professor Ihlen.