Associate Professor Ron Dick is the Director of Cardiac Services Clinical Institute at Epworth HealthCare and the former Chair of Epworth’s Group Medical Advisory Council.

His specialties and interests include interventional cardiology, management of acute coronary syndrome including myocardial infarction, cardiogenic shock, clinical research and medical education.
 

Dr Lachlan Henderson is a medical practitioner who has 30 years’ experience in the health industry, joining Epworth in February 2017.

Lachlan’s previous executive roles include CEO St John of God (SJG) Subiaco Hospital, Executive Director of SJG Perth Northern Region, CEO SJG Pathology and the Group Director Medical Services and Strategy, SJG. Prior to taking on these roles, he was a General Practitioner for more than a decade. Critical to his success has been his focus on quality patient care and staff satisfaction while enhancing the business and financial outcomes for the organisation.

In his career, Lachlan has held a variety of University and Board appointments. He is currently Vice President of the Australian Private Hospitals Association (APHA) and Chair of Cricket Australia.

A senior interventional cardiologist with twenty years' experience, Martin trained at the Royal Melbourne Hospital and completed specialty training in coronary stenting at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford.

His primary interest is in the treatment of chest pain or discomfort and he specialises in stenting coronary arteries and bypass grafts. He uses non-invasive CT screening of heart arteries extensively. He also manages high blood pressure, heart valve dysfunction and cardiac arrhythmias.

Martin is active in teaching and is a member of the Cardiac Society of Australia and New Zealand and the Royal Australasian College of Physicians.

Dr Saibal Kar is Director of Structural Heart Disease Interventions and Clinical Research at Los Robles Health System.

An astute clinician and teacher with a special expertise in interventions for structural heart disease, he is a Clinical Professor of Medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. In his present position he directs important clinical trials involving structural heart disease interventions in the hospital, and at a national level. Dr. Kar focuses his research on coronary restenosis, device development, and the advancement of percutaneous techniques in the treatment of structural heart disease. He is recognized internationally for his research and clinical experience in transcatheter mitral valve repair, as well as transcatheter treatment options for prevention of cardioembolic stroke. In the preclinical lab, he has helped develop novel drug-eluting stents that are currently being used in clinical practice.

Dr. Kar's work has been published in more than 150 peer-reviewed publications and textbooks. He has delivered more than 200 lectures in national and international conferences all around the globe. He serves as a reviewer for a number of preeminent cardiology journals and is on the editorial board of several journals as well. He is a fellow and active member of the American College of Cardiology, Society of Coronary Angiography and Intervention, and the Cardiac Society of India.

Mr Marco Larobina is a consultant cardiothoracic surgeon at the Epworth Richmond Hospital, Royal Melbourne Hospital, Melbourne Private Hospital, and One Heart Cardiology. He has a special interest in adult cardiac surgery, minimally invasive surgery, adult congenital heart disease, thoracic surgery, and aortic valve surgery.

He completed his training at the Alfred Hospital, Royal Melbourne Hospital, and Royal Children’s Hospital. Following this, Marco completed a Fellowship at Papworth Hospital, Cambridge and Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston and obtained his Fellowship from Royal Australasian College of Surgeons.

disease.

Alex is a cardiologist at the Austin Hospital and lead physician in the Cardio-Haematology service where she manages patients with cardiac issues who have cancer. Her other interests include women’s cardiac health and imaging for structural intervention. She has published extensively, and her manuscripts have been featured in the world’s top cardiology journals. She was recently awarded scholarships from the Cardiac Society of Australia and New Zealand, the National Health and Medical Research Council, National Heart Foundation and the Epworth Medical Research Foundation to undertake a PhD on “Cardiovascular Risk Reduction in Cancer Patients” through the University of Melbourne.

Alex has developed a smartphone based cardiovascular risk reduction program called ‘BreastMate’ aimed to care for the cardiac health of women with breast cancer. This has been rolled out in a state-wide randomised controlled trial called SMART-BREAST.

James Tatoulis is Professor of Cardiothoracic Surgery in the University of Melbourne, and Cardiothoracic Surgeon at the Royal Melbourne Hospital

He has an international reputation in coronary surgery especially in the use of the internal thoracic and radial arteries in total arterial grafting, together with Professor Brian Buxton, based on their work at Epworth, and in the University of Melbourne hospitals, and has over 200 publications.

An advocate for surgical education, he has been extensively involved in the training of over 50 cardiac surgeons from Australia and around the world, and as an innovator, in the introduction of implantable defibrillators, Off pump CABG and intraoperative transoesophageal echo in Australia.

He has had prior roles on behalf of cardiac surgery in Government, College, and Professional Societies and was former Chief Medical Advisor to the National Heart Foundation .

Together with Prof Brian Buxton, Mr. George Westlake and Mr. Tony Wilson, he was one of the four original cardiac surgeons when cardiac surgery commenced at Epworth in 1981.

Mr Aubrey Almeida graduated MBBS from the University of Melbourne in 1986 and two years later undertook four years of military services with the Royal Australian Army Medical Corps. He completed his cardiothoracic training in 1999, training at the Prince Charles Hospital in Brisbane and the Royal Melbourne Hospital, Melbourne, whereupon he undertook a graduate Fellowship at the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota, USA. He commenced practice in 2001 as a consultant cardiothoracic surgeon and is a member of the senior medical staff at Monash Medical Centre and Epworth HealthCare. Aubrey is a member of the team that pioneered robotic surgery in Australia.

Aubrey is the Vice President of the Australian and New Zealand Society of Cardiac and Thoracic Surgeons and a Deputy Director of the Epworth Cardiac Sciences Clinical Institute. He is an examiner for the Royal Australian College of Surgeons. He has interests in valvular heart disease, minimally invasive surgery, adult congenital heart disease and surgical education.

Dr Andris Ellims is a cardiologist and cardiac imaging specialist at Epworth Freemasons, Epworth Richmond and the Alfred Hospital.

Dr Ellims trained at the Royal Melbourne Hospital and completed Advanced Training in Cardiology with a Fellowship in Cardiac Imaging (including echocardiography, cardiac CT and cardiac MRI) at the Alfred Hospital.

Dr Ellims was awarded a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) for his work at Baker IDI Heart & Diabetes Institute involving the use of cardiac imaging to evaluate cardiomyopathies. He is regarded as a national expert in this area. He has published extensively in major scientific journals and has presented original research at both international and local scientific congresses. Dr Ellims extended his research into clinical practice by establishing Victoria’s first specialised clinic for Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy (HCM Clinic @ The Alfred) in 2012.

Mr Marco Larobina is a consultant cardiothoracic surgeon at the Epworth Richmond Hospital, Royal Melbourne Hospital, Melbourne Private Hospital, and One Heart Cardiology. He has a special interest in adult cardiac surgery, minimally invasive surgery, adult congenital heart disease, thoracic surgery, and aortic valve surgery.

He completed his training at the Alfred Hospital, Royal Melbourne Hospital, and Royal Children’s Hospital. Following this, Marco completed a Fellowship at Papworth Hospital, Cambridge and Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston and obtained his Fellowship from Royal Australasian College of Surgeons.

disease.

Dr Gary Liew is an interventional cardiologist specialising in Cardiac CT. He is the lead author of Cardiac Society of Aust & NZ guidelines on Coronary CT and Calcium Scoring. He graduated from the University of Melbourne and completed Physician & Cardiology training at the Royal Melbourne Hospital. After which he undertook a further 6 years of subspeciality training including an interventional fellowship and PhD research at the Royal Adelaide Hospital as an NH & MRC scholar. He helped establish and was Cardiologist in charge of the Cardiac CT service at Royal Adelaide Hospital for 2 years. Gary completed a postgraduate fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital and was a faculty member of Harvard Medical School, USA. He is a Senior Fellow of the University of Melbourne and is active in teaching medical students.

Prof Antony Walton is an Interventional Cardiologist based at Epworth Hospital, and is a Professor in Medicine at Monash University. He is Deputy Director of Cardiology and Head of the Cardiac Labs at The Alfred, and is an Honorary Research Fellow at The Baker Institute. His training in Cardiology was at the Alfred Hospital and further postgraduate training in Interventional Cardiology was undertaken at Stanford University Medical Centre in the United States.

His professional interests include general and interventional cardiology, with particular interests in structural heart disease and hypertension. The developing areas of percutaneous valve replacement and interventional techniques for the treatment of common conditions such as hypertension are particular interests. He has published his clinical and research work in peer reviewed manuscripts on subjects including the novel techniques of percutaneous aortic valve replacement and renal denervation for refractory hypertension.

Mr Peter Skillington is a specialist cardiothoracic surgeon. He also performs routine coronary artery bypass graft, heart valve and aortic surgery. 

He is Director of the Cardiothoracic Surgery Unit of the Royal Melbourne Hospital and Deputy Director of the Cardiac Sciences Clinical Institute, Epworth Hospital.

His chief research and clinical interests are aortic valve replacement utilising the ROSS procedure, for which he is a world expert, an operation which he has pioneered in this country. His other main area of interest is in adult congenital cardiac surgery, an area in which he has performed over 900 congenital cardiac surgery procedures since the 1990s. 

He has previously been President of the Australian and New Zealand Society of Cardiothoracic Surgeons (ANZSCTS), and also he has been Chairman of the Board of Studies for Cardiothoracic Surgery Training in Australia and New Zealand (RACS).

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Dr Peter Bergin is the Medical Director of the Heart Failure & Transplant service at The Alfred in Melbourne, a position he has held for over 20 years.

He has extensive experience in the management of all aspects of heart failure from outpatient management of asymptomatic left ventricular dysfunction to the treatment of end-stage heart failure. This includes use of mechanical support, both temporary and permanent as well as use of investigational drugs and devices in severe heart failure.

Dr Bergin’s other major interest is the diagnostic use of echocardiography.

He has extensive teaching experience and was Director of Training for Cardiology at The Alfred for many years. He continues to be an active teacher both within and outside the hospital.

Associate Professor Ron Dick is the Director of Cardiac Services Clinical Institute at Epworth HealthCare and the former Chair of Epworth’s Group Medical Advisory Council.

His specialties and interests include interventional cardiology, management of acute coronary syndrome including myocardial infarction, cardiogenic shock, clinical research and medical education.
 

Dr Mark Horrigan is an Interventional Cardiologist located in Victoria. His specialty is in interventional cardiology and has special interests in coronary angioplasty, valvuloplasty and device closure.

He practices at Warringal Private Hospital and is Co-Founder of GenesisCare.

Dr Horrigan completed his MBBS from the University of Melbourne and then completed a Fellowship at the Royal Perth Hospital. he then undertook a fellowship in interventional cardiology from Cleveland Clinic.

Prof Stephen Nicholls is a world-renowned cardiologist, and leads the Victorian Heart Hospital (VHH) due to open at Monash University's Clayton campus in 2022.

A multiple-award winner, Professor Nicholls has written more than 770 manuscripts, book chapters and conference proceedings, and has raised more than $100 million in research funding.

Since 2012, Professor Nicholls has been Deputy Director and Heart Health Theme Leader at the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute (SAHMRI). He is also Professor of Cardiology at the University of Adelaide, Consultant Cardiologist at the Royal Adelaide Hospital and Principal Research Fellow of the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia (NHMRC).

Professor Nicholls’ research broadly focuses on developing new strategies to reduce the risk of heart disease, involving translational research spanning preclinical human and clinical trials.

Angela Brennan is a Critical Care Registered Nurse who transitioned from cardiac nursing into the higher education research sector in 2004. Her major research & academic achievements have been in the Clinical Quality Registry (CQR) arena. Leveraging off her clinical background she was able to implement a clinician led research-based registry (Melbourne Interventional Group - MIG) that now has over 80 publications in peer review journals and has enabled many training clinician cardiologists to undertake research. Her work with the MIG Registry led to the ACPR Pilot project, funded by the Australian Commission for Safety & Quality in Health Care (ACSQHC) whose aim was to ‘Test and Validate the Operating Principles for Quality Clinical Registries’. Following ACPR, funding was successfully obtained to undertake the Victorian Cardiac Outcomes Registry (VCOR) – the first state-wide percutaneous coronary intervention registry in Australia whose aim is to monitor the performance of health services in Victoria in the delivery of high quality, cardiac-based therapies. Broadly, VCOR provides information to clinicians, hospitals, health funders and consumers that can be utilised to ensure patients receive the highest quality cardiac care possible. VCOR has been highly successful and since 2017 has all public and private hospitals undertaking PCI in the state contributing data – an unparalleled achievement in the Australian cardiac registry arena. VCOR has also undertaken activities related to ST Elevation Myocardial Infarction (STEMI) and Heart Failure. In 2018 VCOR began a Cardiac Implantable Electronic Device (CIED) module. VCOR has a rich research program with 55 publications in peer review journals. In 2019 Ms Brennan undertook the coursework for the Certified Health Informatician Australasia (CHIA) program and successfully attained certification. Ms Brennan is the Program Manager, Cardiac Registries in the Centre for Research Excellence in Therapeutics (CCRET), in the School of Public Health & Preventive Medicine at Monash University.

Associate Professor Ron Dick is the Director of Cardiac Services Clinical Institute at Epworth HealthCare and the former Chair of Epworth’s Group Medical Advisory Council.

His specialties and interests include interventional cardiology, management of acute coronary syndrome including myocardial infarction, cardiogenic shock, clinical research and medical education.
 

Dr Saibal Kar is Director of Structural Heart Disease Interventions and Clinical Research at Los Robles Health System.

An astute clinician and teacher with a special expertise in interventions for structural heart disease, he is a Clinical Professor of Medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. In his present position he directs important clinical trials involving structural heart disease interventions in the hospital, and at a national level. Dr. Kar focuses his research on coronary restenosis, device development, and the advancement of percutaneous techniques in the treatment of structural heart disease. He is recognized internationally for his research and clinical experience in transcatheter mitral valve repair, as well as transcatheter treatment options for prevention of cardioembolic stroke. In the preclinical lab, he has helped develop novel drug-eluting stents that are currently being used in clinical practice.

Dr. Kar's work has been published in more than 150 peer-reviewed publications and textbooks. He has delivered more than 200 lectures in national and international conferences all around the globe. He serves as a reviewer for a number of preeminent cardiology journals and is on the editorial board of several journals as well. He is a fellow and active member of the American College of Cardiology, Society of Coronary Angiography and Intervention, and the Cardiac Society of India.

Prof Antony Walton is an Interventional Cardiologist based at Epworth Hospital, and is a Professor in Medicine at Monash University. He is Deputy Director of Cardiology and Head of the Cardiac Labs at The Alfred, and is an Honorary Research Fellow at The Baker Institute. His training in Cardiology was at the Alfred Hospital and further postgraduate training in Interventional Cardiology was undertaken at Stanford University Medical Centre in the United States.

His professional interests include general and interventional cardiology, with particular interests in structural heart disease and hypertension. The developing areas of percutaneous valve replacement and interventional techniques for the treatment of common conditions such as hypertension are particular interests. He has published his clinical and research work in peer reviewed manuscripts on subjects including the novel techniques of percutaneous aortic valve replacement and renal denervation for refractory hypertension.

Mr Peter Skillington is a specialist cardiothoracic surgeon. He also performs routine coronary artery bypass graft, heart valve and aortic surgery. 

He is Director of the Cardiothoracic Surgery Unit of the Royal Melbourne Hospital and Deputy Director of the Cardiac Sciences Clinical Institute, Epworth Hospital.

His chief research and clinical interests are aortic valve replacement utilising the ROSS procedure, for which he is a world expert, an operation which he has pioneered in this country. His other main area of interest is in adult congenital cardiac surgery, an area in which he has performed over 900 congenital cardiac surgery procedures since the 1990s. 

He has previously been President of the Australian and New Zealand Society of Cardiothoracic Surgeons (ANZSCTS), and also he has been Chairman of the Board of Studies for Cardiothoracic Surgery Training in Australia and New Zealand (RACS).

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A/Prof Michael Wong has particular interests in device implantation (leadless pacemakers/subcutaneous defibrillators/CRT) and treatment of complex atrial/ventricular arrhythmias using contemporary catheter ablation techniques. His PhD research described novel findings on predictors and mechanisms for lethal cardiac arrhythmias and sudden cardiac death. He has received numerous awards including the Ralph Reader Prize from the Cardiac Society of Australia and New Zealand/World Congress of Cardiology, the Young Investigator Award from the North American Heart Rhythm Society and the National Heart Foundation Paul Korner Innovation Award. Michael is currently Director of Cardiac Electrophysiology at Western Health and a National Heart Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow.