Internationally recognized stroke expert Jose Biller, M.D., FAAN, FACP, FAHA, will be the featured speaker for the 13th annual Gertrude and Dewey Ziegler Professorship Lecture presented by the University of Kansas Medical Center's Department of Neurology.

The event, free and open to the public, will be at 8 a.m., June 14, in the Clendening Auditorium, Robinson 2004, on the KU Medical Center campus.

As part of his lecture, titled "Alteplase for Acute Ischemic Stroke: Questions You Always Wanted to Ask but Never Dared," Biller will provide an up-to-date set of recommendations in the urgent and emergency evaluation and treatment with intravenous alteplase for acute ischemic stroke. Alteplase is a drug therapy designed to dissolve clots and allow for restored blood flow to viable tissue.

He also will identify indications and contraindications for using alteplase and discuss appropriate management of complications related to administering the therapy.

Biller is a professor of neurology and neurological surgery and chair of the Department of Neurology at the Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine, where he also is the director of the vascular surgery neurology fellowship program and medical director of the stroke program. 

The annual Ziegler lectureship honors Dewey Ziegler, M.D., who led the Section of Neurology at KU Medical Center from 1966 until 1974, when it became the Department of Neurology. Ziegler went on to serve as chair of the department until 1985. During his tenure, he established the neurology residency program. 

Nationally and internationally known, Ziegler helped establish neurology as an independent field and was one of the first headache specialists in neurology. Becoming a professor emeritus in 1990, he remained on the faculty through his death in 2012 at age 92.