John David Spence

John David Spence CM (born November 10, 1944) was a Canadian medical doctor, medical researcher and Professor Emeritus at the University of Western Ontario. He was affiliated with the University of Western Ontario (where he taught Clinical Neurological Science) and the Robarts Research Institute, one of Canada's leading medical research organizations. Before his retirement from clinical practice in July 2022, he was also affiliated with the London Health Sciences Centre's University Hospital (where he set up and ran stroke prevention clinics). He was a recognized expert in stroke prevention and stroke prevention research, with more than 600 peer-reviewed publications since 1970. He delivered more than 600 lectures on stroke prevention in 42 countries. In 2015, he received the Research Excellence Award from the Canadian Society for Atherosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology Archived 2016-10-05 at the Wayback Machine. In 2019, he was appointed a Member of the Order of Canada, and in 2020 he received the William Feinberg Award from the American Heart Association for excellence in clinical stroke research. [1]

Dr. Spence was the director of the Stroke Prevention & Atherosclerosis Research Centre (SPARC), a unit of the Robarts Research Institute. With Maria Dicicco, RVT, he pioneered the measurement of total plaque area (TPA) in a patient's carotid artery using ultrasound technology. The ability to measure TPA gives doctors the ability to treat, and measure the change in, the amount of plaque in a patient's arteries and has given researchers the ability to measure the effectiveness of new drug treatment therapies for stroke prevention in high-risk patients with narrowing of the carotid arteries, the process of "Treating Arteries" was associated with a >80% reduction in the 2-year risk of strokes and heart attacks. Dr. Spence was recognized as "The Father of Total Plaque Area Measurement" and the importance of TPA measurement is that, in Dr Spence's words, "We can now treat arteries instead of just treating risk factors".