Professor David McGiffin
Professor David McGiffin
Current appointments: Senior Cardiothoracic Surgeon, Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery and Transplantation, The Alfred Hospital, (now retired from clinical practice) and Professor of cardiothoracic surgery, Monash University, Melbourne Australia and Honorary Professor, School of Medicine, University of Queensland, Brisbane Australia. Clinical work: Prof. McGiffin spent most of his career at the University of Alabama at Birmingham where his major focus was thoracic transplantation, mechanical circulatory support, and pulmonary endarterectomy. He returned to Australia in 2013 as head of the department of cardiothoracic surgery and transplantation at the Alfred and Professor of cardiothoracic surgery at Monash University, Melbourne from 2013 to 2021. His clinical activities were adult cardiac surgery, pulmonary endarterectomy, adult heart transplantation, mechanical circulatory support, adult, and pediatric lung transplantation. He established a pulmonary endarterectomy program for chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension at the Alfred which is now the major referral program for Australia and New Zealand. Research: Since 2013 his major research interest has been in donor heart machine perfusion, the goal being to extend the ischemic time of donor hearts from the current approximately 4 hours out to 8 hours by hypothermic machine perfusion. Four years of experimental work have underpinned the Australian/New Zealand Trial of Extended Donor Heart Ischemic Time, of which he is the co-Principal Investigator. He is also involved in understanding the pathology of ventricular assist device driveline infection devising mitigation strategies.
Q & A
Questions moderated by Ronan McKeague.