2019 Endocarditis Symposium, Brisbane

David T Durack, MD, D Phil, FRCP, FRACP, FACP

Dr. David T Durack is Consulting Professor of Medicine at Duke University, and was Senior Vice President, Corporate Medical Affairs and Chief Medical Officer at Becton Dickinson & Co. (retired 10/2012). Education: Correspondence School of West Australia; Scotch College, WA; University of WA medical degree ’69; Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, Doctor of Philosophy ’73, doctoral thesis entitled "Experimental Endocarditis". Internship and residency at Radcliffe Infirmary, Oxford and Royal Postgraduate Medical School, Hammersmith Hospital, London. Chief Resident and Faculty member, Department of Medicine, University of Washington, ’74-’77.  Chief, Division of Infectious Diseases and International Health and Professor of Medicine, Duke University, ’77-’94. Research interests: pathogenesis and chemotherapy of Infective Endocarditis and other bacterial, viral and fungal infections. He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians (UK), the Royal Australasian College of Physicians and the American College of Physicians; he has published more than 230 articles and textbook chapters and co-edited several textbooks. Dr. Durack has been elected to the American Society for Clinical Investigation, the Council of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, and the American Academy of Microbiology. He has served on an FDA Review Panel, the Joint Commission Resources Board of Directors, and as Chairman of the Board, ASM Resources. In addition to his clinical and research activities, he has 17 years’ experience as a senior executive in the medical devices and diagnostics industry, and currently provides consultation to medical technology companies.Dr Durack is also on the ISCVID (International Society for Cardiovascular Infectious Diseases) Council.

Eugene Athan. MBBS (Hons) FRACP MPH  MD

Professor Eugene Athan is Dirctor of Infectious Diseases and Infection Control Program, Barwon Health, Victoria. He is also chair of Healthcare Infection Control Group (HICSIG) of the Australasia Society of Infectious Disease (ASID) Co-Founder of the Geelong Centre of Emerging Infectious Diseases (GCEID) in collaboration with Barwon Health, Deakin University and CSIRO AAHL. This centre is developing multidisciplinary research to tackle emerging zoonotic diseases of public health importance. He has also worked as a public health specialist and epidemiologist to support humanitarian activities to mitigate several large scale communicable disease threats to populations including Cholera epidemics. Co recipient Sir Richard Stawell memorial prize for 2007 and 2015. Awarded certificate of Honour from Federal Minister of Health 2006 for humanitarian medical service in Aceh, Indonesia post tsunami. He has extensive experience in clinical and epidemiologic research in areas of emerging infectious diseases including health care associated infections, Mycobacteria ulcerans, Infective endocarditis including the multinational collaboration for endocarditis research (ICE), device infections, multiresistant bacteria. He has contributed to or co-authored 120 peer reviewed publications some in high impact journals and text book chapters. Dr Athan is also on the ISCVID (International Society for Cardiovascular Infectious Diseases) Council and and Convened the 11th Symposium on Modern Concepts in Endocarditis and Cardiovascular Infectious Diseases in Cairns in 2011.

Nathan Dwyer  BMedSci (Hons), MBBS (Hons), PhD, FRACP

Nathan is an interventional cardiologist with an interest in the diagnosis and management of pulmonary hypertension. Graduating from the University of Tasmania in 2000, he completed his specialty cardiology training at the Royal Hobart Hospital in 2007. He was awarded his PhD in 2010 by researching pulmonary haemodynamics and wave reflection before undertaking 2 years of subspecialty training in coronary intervention and clinical research at the Libin Cardiovascular Institute of Alberta, Calgary, Canada. Nathan is a staff cardiologist at the Royal Hobart Hospital with teaching responsibilities and manages the Tasmanian Pulmonary Hypertension Service. He’s actively involved in heart failure and PAH clinical trials as well as investigator lead studies. He’s set up the Tasmanian Statewide Infective Endocarditis Service and is currently auditing its activity.

Jason Roberts B.Pharm (Hons) PhD

Professor Jason Roberts is a National Health and Medical Research Council Practitioner Fellow at The University of Queensland and Consultant Clinical Pharmacist at the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital. He is Director of Centre of Research Excellent REDUCE within the University of Queensland Centre for Clinical Research and is Director of the Centre for Translational Anti-infective Pharmacodynamics in the School of Pharmacy. Professor Roberts is a clinician–scientist with a strong interest in research and his principal research theme is optimization of antibiotic dosing in the critically ill. He has been invited to present his results at major international conferences in critical care, infectious diseases, pharmacy, nephrology, transplantation and safety and is widely published.

Stephen R. Graves BSc (Hons) MBBS, PhD, FASM, FACTM, FRCPA

Professor Stephen Graves is a medical microbiologist and Fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists of Australasia (RCPA). He is Chair of the RCPA Faculty of Science. Twenty years ago he established the Australian Rickettsial Reference Laboratory (ARRL) as a boutique, not-for-profit, microbiology diagnostic and research laboratory, located at University Hospital Geelong, Victoria.  He is the Approved Pathology Provider (APP) for this laboratory which specializes in diagnosing infections transmitted by ectoparasites such as ticks, lice, fleas and mites. In Australia these infections are mainly rickettsial and Q Fever (Coxiella burnetii). He was involved in the discovery of Flinders Island Spotted Fever (Rickettsia honei) and has had a new rickettsia, found in the kangaroo tick (Amblyomma triguttatum), named after him (Rickettsia gravesii). He is involved in the development of new vaccines against Q Fever, for use in goats and humans. He continues to work part-time as a senior staff specialist in microbiology at Nepean Hospital in Penrith, NSW.

John F Sedgwick MBBS (QLD) FRACP FCSANZ FASE

Dr John Sedgwick is a consultant cardiologist with subspecialty expertise in echocardiography and was employed as a senior medical officer in cardiology at The Prince Charles Hospital from 2011 to mid 2019, after completing an echocardiology fellowship. Dr Sedgwick now holds a position as an honorary senior staff cardiologist to continue his research, where he is co-chair and co-founder of infective endocarditis Queensland (ieQ).

Dr Sedgwick is a Senior Lecturer with the University of Queensland Medical School and a PhD candidate. He has co-authored numerous publications in peer-reviewed national and international journals, including two book chapters and has previously been a local examiner for the Royal Australasian College of Physicians clinical exam. He also is an advanced life support (ALS 2) Instructor with the Australian Resuscitation Council.

He has been certified by the National Board of Echocardiography (USA) receiving ‘Diplomate – Adult Comprehensive Echocardiography’ status as well as being granted Fellowship of the American Society of Echocardiography. Dr Sedgwick is also registered as a Level A CT coronary angiography specialist by the Australian Conjoint committee responsible for the recognition of training in CTCA.

Dr Sedgwick practices in all aspects of adult cardiology with special interest in cardiovascular risk management, valvular heart disease, infective endocarditis, perioperative cardiac imaging (TOE) and stress echocardiography.

Dr Peter Pohlner MBBS FRACS
Emeritus Cardiothoracic Surgeon     TPCH 2012 – 2019
Cardiothoracic training at Alfred Hospital, Melbourne, Leeds General Infirmary UK (M Ionescu),
Greenlane Hospital, Auckland N-Z (B Barrat-Boyes).
Cardiothoracic Surgical Consultant TPCH 1979-2012. Director of CTS 2008-2012.

Major interests: -  Congenital Heart Disease. Surgical Chairman of World Congress of Paediatric Cardiology and Cardiac Surgery, Cairns 2009.

• Surgical Teaching and training in CHD: China, India, Malaysia, Brazil, Iraq 1986-2015
• Publications;  Research: flexible stent development for allograft valve use. Study of autologous pericardium behaviour in RVOFT enlargement
• Publications  related to allograft use and durability using Aortic and tricuspid tissue
• Congenital Heart Disease: Congenital aortic stenosis Tetralogy of Fallot surgery, Middle Aortic Syndrome

Currently engaged in Research; infective endocarditis, Indigenous Rheumatic Heart Disease. Development of decellularized allograft scaffolds for host cell repopulation

Teaching trainees and junior medical staff involved in Cardiothoracic surgery

Darryl J Burstow MBBS, FRACP, FCSANZ, FASE

Darryl Burstow is a Senior Staff Cardiologist at The Prince Charles Hospital, Associate Professor, Department of Medicine, University of Queensland and Adjunct Professor, School of Clinical Sciences, Queensland University of Technology. After completing advanced training in cardiology at The Prince Charles Hospital, his serious echo education began at the Mayo Clinic, Rochester where he completed an Echo fellowship in the late 1980’s. Following his return to Brisbane, he initially worked in private practice at Wesley Hospital before taking up the position of Director of Echocardiography at TPCH from 1991 until 2016. His clinical and research interests include the Echo assessment of diastolic function and prosthetic valves, Intraoperative echocardiography and Echocardiography education.  He is co-Director of the Echo Australia educational meeting which has been running for 17 years. 

Michael Williams B.Pharm.

Michael is an infectious diseases and antimicrobial stewardship pharmacist at the Prince Charles Hospital in Brisbane. His research interests are therapeutic drug monitoring in infective endocarditis and outpatient parenteral antimicrobial therapy.

Joseph C Lee  MBBS FRACP FAANMS

Joseph Lee is Clinical Director of Nuclear Medicine at The Prince Charles Hospital, Brisbane. He has a keen interest in research (being an author of over 50 publications) and implementing these findings in a practical setting – especially relating to Cardiology, Pneumonology, Oncology and PET. Collaboration with other medical sub-specialties is central to his clinical work and research. Additionally, he has an appointment as a Senior Lecturer at the University of Queensland, is on the editorial board of Annals of Translational Medicine and participates in the Continuing Professional Development Committee of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians and their State Committee as well as various local interest groups.

Robert L Horvath MBBS FRACP FRCPA

Robert is an Infectious Diseases Physician at the Prince Charles Hospital and Microbiologist at Pathology Queensland. In 2015 He co-founded with John Sedgwick the Infective Endocarditis Working Group (IEWG)  which evolved into ieQ in 2018. He also established Queensland's first funded Infectious Diseases Telehealth service providing remote services to an entire HHS  (Wide Bay population 289,000). His Clinical and research interests include cardiovascular infections, solid organ transplant infections and influenza.