Shibanosuke Katsuki, MD, PhD

1930 — 1993

Katsuki was a pioneer in CVD epidemiology in Japan who initiated the Hisayama Study in 1961, one of the earliest prospective studies and focused on hypertension and cerebrovascular disease in Hisayama Town near Fukuoka.

He received all his doctoral education at the Imperial Kyushu University Medical School and headed the Second Department of Medicine there from 1956-1971.

He conceived the Hisayama study to clarify the incidence of stroke in a Japanese community because the mortality rate from stroke, particularly cerebral hemorrhage, in the mortality statistics in Japan had the attention of epidemiologists world-wide. At that time, stroke patients were dying outside hospital because it had long been believed that stroke in its acute stage should not be transported by ambulance. Katsuki reported the findings in the 5th Princeton Conference on Cerebrovascular Diseases in 1966.

Katsuki and his group collaborated in an international study on stroke with A.B. Baker’s group at the University of Minnesota during the period 1962-1969, supported by NIH and published in a special issue of Geriatrics in 1969. Katsuki was president of the 12th World Congress of Neurology held in Kyoto in 1981. After he retired from Kyushu University, he served as director at Kyushu Central Hospital of the Mutual Aid Association of Public School Teachers from 1970 to 1974 and as a President of Miyazaki Medical College from 1981-1993. (KP)