After finishing his undergraduate studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dr. Adrian Pttgen earned his doctorate degree in medicine from Emory University School of Medicine, where he also completed his internship in Internal Medicine. Dr. Pttgen then moved to Baltimore for clinical training in Neurology at Johns Hopkins University. Once he had graduated from the Johns Hopkins Neurology Residency Program, Dr. Pttgen accepted a position in the Johns Hopkins Neurosciences Critical Care Fellowship. After completing this two-year program, Dr. Pttgen joined the faculty at Johns Hopkins and now serves as an Assistant Professor with appointments in the departments of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine.

Dr. Pttgen now portions his time between clinical and research activities. Board certified in Adult Neurology and Vascular Neurology, his clinical responsibilities center on the care of patients admitted to the Neurocritical Care Units of the Johns Hopkins Hospital and the Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center. Dr. Pttgen has several research interests. A major focus of his work centers on the study of neurological recovery after cardiac arrest. In this area, Dr. Pttgen is active at many levels on the translational pathway from animal models of electrophysiologic recovery after ischemia to clinical research into emergence from coma after cardiac arrest to the impact of medical systems policy on survival. Dr. Pttgen also investigates the nature of sleep in the intensive care environment. This effort, a collaboration with the Johns Hopkins Neurology Sleep Disorders Center, specifically focuses on the effect of abnormal sleep on outcomes for patients with critical brain injuries such as subarachnoid hemorrhage.