Professor Alicia Dennis

Douglas Joseph Professor, Fulbright Scholar. MBBS, PhD, MPH, PGDipEcho, GAICD, FANZCA

I am an academic clinician researcher. My physiological research in preeclampsia has created a paradigm shifting unifying model, the “Constant Stimulus Adaptive Response (CSAR) Model of Preeclampsia“, from the field of obstetric anesthesiology that leverages known interdisciplinary knowledge of hemodynamics and hypertension and applies it to obstetrics. It states that preeclampsia is driven by the fetus (not placenta). It is the first model to describe a mismatch between maternal oxygen supply and fetal oxygen demand. Published in 2014, based on experimental work starting in 2008, it explains maternal hypertension, its complications, and the condition’s heterogeneity (PMID: 25302966).

“The model fulfils many of the Bradford Hill Criteria for causality. It is supported by human experiments and refutes the idea that the placenta is the fundamental cause of preeclampsia and that biomarkers cause preeclampsia. It provides a framework that supports temporality, biological gradient, specificity, consistency, plausibility, and coherence. It explains why the condition is so common and why treatments, including drugs, therapeutics, repurposed medications, or plasmapheresis aimed at removing or reducing biomarkers in patients with preeclampsia have and will continue to fail in their goal to benefit pregnant women and unborn babies, and may in fact worsen the condition. It provides the framework for interventions aimed at preventing and treating the condition by addressing oxygen supply to the fetus and fetal oxygen demand. The model has yet to be disproven.” Anesthesiology July 2025 in press

As well as publishing the CSAR model, the scientific work behind it and ongoing hemodynamic work, I have spoken at major international meetings and received international prizes and medals for this work including the Zuspan Prize (International Society for the Study of Hypertension in Pregnancy), the Gilbert Troup Prize and Medal, the Douglas Joseph Professorship and a Fulbright Scholarship (Brigham and Women’s Hospital Boston US) being the highest ranked medical sciences scholar in 2023. Through my work in preeclampsia I introduced echocardiography (TTE) to help manage unwell pregnant patients thereby introducing contemporary TTE to this field globally.

The CSAR model offers alternative approaches to prevention and treatment of preeclampsia that may dramatically reduce global maternal, fetal and neonatal suffering and death, and prevent long term complications of hypertension.

Featured publications

The CSAR model was originally published in 2014 in the journal Anaesthesia. This open access publication can be read here: –

Hypertension and haemodynamics in pregnant women – is a unified theory for pre-eclampsia possible?

I recently published (February 2025) a review article outlining in detail the perioperative management of patients with preeclampsia. The article can be found here: –

Perioperative Management of Patients with Preeclampsia: A Comprehensive Review