Christian Reiterer

If you do research, you have to do it honestly and you have to be sure of what you are doing. You have to be convinced that what you are doing is important for everything and everybody.

Christian Reiterer, MD, is an attendant in Anesthesiology and Intensive Care Medicine at the Medical University of Vienna. He is also a reviewer for several peer reviewed scientific journals and is currently involved in multiple clinical studies. 

His path to becoming a doctor was not a direct one. At first, he attended business school, where he thought he wanted to become a lawyer. But he soon realized it is not for him, passed the medical school exam and enrolled in medical school in Vienna.

In Reiterer’s opinion, research is the most important thing we have for improving clinical practice of doctors and expanding our knowledge in evidence-based medicine. However, it is also important to work with patients, because if someone conducts only research, they may lose sight of what is important in clinical practice.

Even though it takes up most of his free time, Christian Reiterer, MD, still researches for the good of his patients. His study was done in the operating room and the postoperative intensive care unit. The intervention defined administration of 80% versus 30% oxygen throughout surgery and for the first two postoperative hours.

The main finding of this study was that there was no beneficial effect of perioperative supplemental oxygen administration on postoperative NT-proBNP concentration and MINS. It seems likely that supplemental oxygen has no effect on the release of NTproBNP in patients at-risk for cardiovascular complications undergoing major abdominal surgery.

Research is really hard work. To unwind, Reiterer likes to read a book or do sports. But in the end, he admits, research is like a hobby for him.