Clinical-Experimental Application Research (CEAR)

Prof. Dr. Michael Behnes is head of interventional cardiology, experienced clinical scientist and research group leader of CEAR. Together with his research team a range of diseases that ultimately cause or contribute to the development of heart failure at all stages are investigated.

These include ischemic cardiomyopathy, coronary artery disease, myocardial infarction, complex high-risk intervention and chronic total occlusions (CHIP & CTO), non-ischemic cardiomyopathies, valvular heart diseases, cardiogenic shock, life-threatening ventricular tachyarrhythmias, and sudden cardiac death. In addition, studying sepsis and septic shock as well as healthcare economics is of major interest.

Methodologically, clinical-experimental research approaches are applied, covering multidisciplinary sciences, biochemistry molecular biology, medical laboratory technology and invasive cardiac therapies. The aim is to initiate both real-life observational studies and multi-centre randomized trial concepts, while also including innovative experimental biomarker research at the protein level and targeted multi-marker metabolomic analyses to examine disease-specific patterns.

A wide range of methodological properties, including accurate database management both for clinical and biobanking material, accurate assessment and implementation of multiple statistical methods are applied. These include amongst others multivariable regression models, propensity score matching, principal component analysis, permutation testing, heatmapping, and various techniques for assessing the quality of prediction models, including Chi-Square tests, Hosmer-Lemeshow, Bayesian correction, discrimination and calibration, and reclassification.