Karl-Heinz Ladwig, Professor for Psychosomatic Medicine and Medical Psychology, is senior research professor at the Medical Faculty of the Technische Universität Muenchen (TUM).
His key research interests focus on epidemiological and clinical psychosocial stress-research (Psychocardiology) and metabolic diseases (with T2DM as major interest). Here, endocrine regulation patterns (including cortisol but also oxytocin, melatonin and leptin) are core areas together with the crosstalk between the autonomic, endocrine and inflammatory stress response system.
About 25 years ago, simultaneously with a Canadian working group, KH Ladwig was among the first to elucidate the impact of a depressed mood as prognostic risk factor during the post-acute course after a myocardial infarction (post-infarction depression) which opened world-wide research initiatives on this topic. In the following time, he studied the quality of life in patients after cardiac arrest survival, the long term mortality risk of PTSD in patients with implanted cardioverter defibrillators.
More recently, he set up a research focus on Atrial Fibrillation and on delay time post AMI (including several clinical studies also with one at Tongj University Hospital in Schanghai, PR China).
He received several scientific awards (among others one by the German Society of Pain Research in 1997; by the German Society of Psychosom. Med. and Medical Psychotherapy in 2009 and the German Society of Cardiology (DGK) (Förderpreis der Fritz Acker-Stiftung in 2016; the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Prävention und Rehabilitation von Herz-Kreislauferkrankungen (DGPR) in 2023 – all acknowledging different aspects of Psychocardiology.)
He joined the expert committee of the German National Institute for State Examinations in Medicine, Pharmacy and Psychotherapy (IMPP) for the last three years.
Ladwig is past chair and current member of the nucleus of the DGK-working group 30 (Psychosocial cardiology) of the DGK; he is member of the Munich Heart Alliance (Deutsches Zentrum für Herz-Kreislauf-Forschung, DZHK) and member of the European Association of Psychosomatic Medicine (EAPM) and the European Association of Preventive Cardiology (EAPC).
Recently, he chaired an EAPC task force for developing a European position paper on the involvement of mental health issues in basic research and clinical aspects of the development and progression of heart failure. He is currently involved in an ongoing task force of the European Society of Cardiology on mental health issues in coronary heart disease and in a working group of the DGK on a statement concerning Implantable defibrillators: Change/ deactivation/ explantation against the background of age and concomitant diseases.