Rehabilitation Medicine for Elderly Patients

Stefano Masiero is Full Professor and Director of the Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine School at the University of Padua, Italy, as well as Chief of the Rehabilitation Department and Director of the Laboratory of Bioengineering and Clinical Movement at Padua University General Hospital. His areas of particular scientific and clinical interest are the effects of exercise and new tools for neurorehabilitation, functional electrical stimulation, and treatments for spinal, musculoskeletal, and rheumatic diseases. Dr. Masiero has been the coordinator of many national and international research projects in the field of rehabilitation. He is a member of the Italian Society of Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine (SIMFER), the Italian Society of Neurological Rehabilitation (SINR), the World Federation for Neurorehabilitation (WFNR), and the European Society of Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine (ESPRM). Dr. Masiero is a member of the editorial boards of many international journals and has authored more than 150 scientific papers on rehabilitation in national and international journals.

Ugo Carraro is a Senior Scholar at Padua University, Italy. He is ex-Principal Investigator of the Laboratory of Translational Myology – CIR-Myo as well as ex-Associate Professor of General Pathology in the Faculty of Medicine at the university. Dr. Carraro is Editor-in-Chief of the European Journal of Translational Myology. His research interests have included especially the basics of muscle plasticity and its applications in biomedicine and he has been the recipient of a number of important research grants, including most recently in partnership with the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute of Electrical Stimulation and with support from the EU INTERREG programs. Other earlier projects included research undertaken with the Wilhelminenspital and the Medical University of Vienna (2005–6), work on “Guided healing and reconstruction of myopathic, denervated, ablated and ectopic skeletal muscle” (project manager, 2004–5), and the EU-funded project "RISE: Use of electrical stimulation to restore standing in paraplegics with long-term denervated degenerated muscles (DDM)" (2001–5).