Ilse Degreef

Background

About Ilse Degreef

Ilse Degreef is full professor of orthopaedic surgery Leuven University and surgeon in chief at the Orthopaedic Department of Leuven University Hospitals. She is a certified European Hand Surgeon and microsurgeon. She has specific attention for Dupuytren disease and elbow joint pathology. In her PhD research, she has developed new insights in Dupuytren disease. In this research field, she optimises a model for the recognition of fibrosis diathesis and introduces new treatment strategies, with innovative modalities such as cellulose implantation, collagenase treatment strategies and neo-adjuvant pharmacotherapy. Today, she continues this research at Leuven University with the development of a novel surgical technique and translational research to obtain new insights and treatment options for this devastating hand disease. In 2021, a Senior Clinical Investigator Fellowship of the FWO (Fonds voor wetenschappelijk onderzoek, Vlaanderen) was granted to focus on this Dupuytren research even more intensely the coming 5 to 15 years. Next to the research appointment, she is senior lecturer in Orthopaedic surgery and hand surgery at the medical school and the department of physiotherapy at Leuven University, combined with a full time clinical practice at the Orthopaedic Department at Leuven University Hospitals in Leuven. She coördinates the inter-university Belgian Hand Surgery Certificate BHSC.