Professor Emeritus
McMaster University
Grimsby, Ontario, Canada
Dr. Theodore (Ted) E. Warkentin, MD, BSc(Med), FRCP(C), FACP, is a clinical and laboratory hematologist and transfusion medicine director at Hamilton General Hospital, and is a Professor in the Department of Pathology and Molecular Medicine, and the Department of Medicine, at McMaster University, in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. His clinical work and related research focusses on acquired thrombocytopenias and coagulopathies—most notably the topics of “heparin-induced thrombocytopenia (HIT)” and "ischemic limb gangrene with pulses" (symmetrical peripheral gangrene/purpura fulminans associated with critical illness). Dr. Warkentin devised the “4Ts”, a widely-used scoring system for evaluating clinical probability of HIT. He is a co-winner (with Prof. John Kelton) of the 2015 Prix Galien Canada Prize, the highest award for Canadian scientists who have made significant advances in pharmaceutical research. He also first identified the explanation for Heyde syndrome (association of aortic stenosis with bleeding gastrointestinal angiodysplasia), developed the concept of "autoimmune HIT” (aHIT), i.e., severe atypical HIT characterized by both heparin-dependent and heparin-independent platelet-activating antibodies, and also reported the first cases of “spontaneous HIT” (SpHIT), a rare HIT-mimicking entity that occurs despite absence of proximate heparin exposure; this concept of heparin-independent platelet-activating anti-PF4 antibodies also provides insight into “vaccine-induced immune thrombotic thrombocytopenia (VITT),” an ultrarare prothrombotic anti-PF4 platelet-activating disorder caused by adenovirus vector vaccines (ChAdOx nCoV-19; Ad26.COV.2S); recently, he reported (in the New England Journal of Medicine) that adenovirus infection itself can trigger a VITT-like disorder. He has co-edited (with Prof. Greinacher) 5 editions of a book, Heparin-Induced Thrombocytopenia, has authored 109 book chapters and 429 peer-reviewed articles (including 20 reports in the New England Journal of Medicine), and has given >900 lectures to national and international audiences.
PL 02.1 - Anti-PF4 antibody-mediated thrombosis disorders: HIT, aHIT, SpHIT, VITT, et cetera
Sunday, June 23, 2024
11:15 – 12:00 ICT