Saving Brain, Restoring Function: The Acute Ischaemic Stroke Pathway

Dr Victoria Metaxa

Consultant in Critical Care, King's College Hospital

Dr Victoria Metaxa is a full-time Critical Care and Major Trauma Consultant, at King’s College Hospital in London. She is a King's College London Honorary Clinical Senior Lecturer, and has a PhD in neurosciences and an MA in Medical Ethics and Palliative Care from Keele University. Her clinical interests include bioethics, end-of-life care, critical care outreach and the management of patients with haematological malignancies. Dr Metaxa is a member of the European Society of Intensive Care (ESICM) Ethics section, and the representative of the section in the e-learning committee. She is the UK National Outreach Forum board Secretary and a member of the Legal and Ethical Advisory Group of the UK Intensive Care Society (ICS).  

Professor Tonny Veenith

Professor of Anaesthesia, Intensive Care & Acute Care Medicine, University of Wolverhampton

Professor Tonny Veenith MBBS, PhD (Cantab), MRCP, FRCA, EDIC, FFICM is a leading clinician‑scientist in critical care, with a special interest in neurocritical care and acute neurological illness. He serves as Professor of Anaesthesia, Intensive Care and Acute Care Medicine at the University of Wolverhampton and Royal Wolverhampton Hospital. His internationally recognised research portfolio spans traumatic brain injury, neuroinflammation, critical illness, and acute neurological emergencies, supported by more than £12 million in competitive research funding secured over the past five years. He has a sustained international research profile with impactful outputs in leading medical journals, including JAMA, The New England Journal of Medicine, Nature Medicine, and The Lancet Respiratory Medicine.

Professor Veenith is the lead author of the UK’s national clinical guideline for the acute management of status epilepticus in adult intensive care, published by the Intensive Care Society. It now serves as the national standard for evidence‑based emergency neurological care (https://ics.ac.uk/resource/status-epilepticus.html). The guideline has shaped practice across UK critical care units and is widely recognised for its clarity, clinical relevance, and integration of emerging neurocritical care evidence. He is also a regional and national lead in academic training anaesthesia and intensive care medicine, holding roles including National Training Lead for the National Institute of Academic Anaesthesia and Macintosh Professor of the Royal College of Anaesthetists. He is a regular speaker at major national and international meetings on subarachnoid haemorrhage, traumatic brain injury, refractory status epilepticus, and neurocritical care pathways.

A committed educator and mentor, Professor Veenith has supervised MSc, MD, and PhD students whose work has been published in high‑impact journals and presented internationally, including at the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine and the Intensive Care Society. His leadership in curriculum development, digital innovation, and inclusive academic practice has shaped training programmes across multiple universities nationally in the UK and internationally.

Manni Waraich

Consultant Neuro Intensivist

Manni Waraich is a consultant neuro intensivist and clinical lead for neurocritical care at the National Hospital for Neurology & Neurosurgery, Queen Square London having previously been a consultant at Southampton Wessex Neurosciences ICU. She is the national lead for the ICS FUSIC brain module which is currently under development with a release date late spring/early summer 2024. She has written chapters on neurocritical care and brain ultrasound for the Oxford Handbook of Anaesthetic Emergencies; Neurology: A Queen Square Textbook and Point of Care Ultrasound in Critical Care.

: @ManniWaraich

Dr Parjam (PJ) Zolfaghari

Consultant in Intensive Care Medicine and Anaesthesia, The Royal London Hospital

PJ was born in Iran and moved to the UK when he was 11 years old. He studied medicine at Guy’s and St. Thomas’ (UMDS) and after initially training to be a surgeon, he switched to anaesthesia and critical care medicine training in East London. He did his PhD with Mervyn Singer at UCL on mitochondrial dysfunction in sepsis and multiorgan failure before starting his consultant post at the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel, London. His interests are metabolic response in critical illness and trauma. His current main focus is his passion for teaching: he runs the Critical Care MSc at Queen Mary University London and is a senior lecturer in the Critical Care and Perioperative Medicine Research Group at QMUL. He is also one of the associate editors of BJA Education. He was Programme Director for three editions of SOA (2023 to 2025) and is very excited to bring education, research and debate to this multi-professional meeting, as well as great social events in the evenings (another one of his passions!). 

: @PJZolfaghari