More than twenty-five years caring for patients with heart disease — in private rooms in Perth, in hospital, and in remote communities across the Kimberley and the Northern Territory.
My clinical and research interest has long been the same question: why do arteries become inflamed, and what can we do about it early enough to matter.
I graduated in Medicine with Honours from the University of Western Australia in 1989, after a science degree in pharmacology, and trained in internal medicine and cardiology at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital. I became a Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians in 1996 and a Fellow of the Cardiac Society of Australia and New Zealand in 2005.
I work as both a cardiologist and a general physician. That combination matters more than it might sound: hearts belong to people who often have kidneys, lungs and diabetes to think about too, and treating one system in isolation rarely serves a patient well.
Alongside metropolitan practice I work with WA Country Health Services in the Kimberley and as a locum cardiologist in the Northern Territory. Cardiovascular risk is not distributed evenly across this country, and specialist care should not be either.
Health equity for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people is a central commitment of my practice. Heart disease presents earlier, is diagnosed later, and contributes more to the life expectancy gap than almost any other condition — which is why Australian guidelines recommend cardiovascular risk assessment from age 30 for First Nations people, fifteen years earlier than for the general population.
Assessing risk properly, and acting on it before symptoms appear — including cholesterol, lipoprotein(a), blood pressure and metabolic risk.
My research background. Atherosclerosis is an inflammatory process, not simply a plumbing problem.
Accredited cardiac CT coronary angiography reporting, including coronary calcium scoring.
Cardiovascular disease remains one of the largest contributors to the life expectancy gap. Specialist cardiology should reach the communities carrying the greatest burden.
Chest pain, heart failure, valve disease, rhythm disturbance, and the general medicine that sits alongside them.
Private consulting rooms.
Visiting Medical Officer, cardiology.
Visiting Medical Officer, cardiology and general medicine.
Cardiac CT coronary angiography reporting.
General physician, Kimberley region.
Locum cardiologist, Northern Territory.
I have reviewed grants for the National Heart Foundation, the National Health and Medical Research Council and the Health Research Council of New Zealand, and manuscripts for the Medical Journal of Australia, Heart Lung & Circulation and the Diving and Hyperbaric Medicine Journal.
My research has centred on inflammation and immune activation in atherosclerosis — how the immune system participates in the disease that causes heart attacks, and whether markers of that process can predict who is at risk.
This work was supported by an NHMRC Postgraduate Scholarship, the Athelstan and Amy Saw Medical Research Fellowship, and project grants from the National Heart Foundation, and drew on the Busselton Health Survey — one of the longest-running population health studies in the world.
I served on the Clinical Events Panel of the international VITATOPS trial, which tested B-vitamin therapy for stroke prevention across thousands of patients.
Recognised with the Sigma-CSANZ Travelling Fellowship (1999) and the Novartis Young Investigators Prize (1999).
Alongside clinical cardiology, I have worked on disease surveillance and the health consequences of armed conflict — principally in Syria, where the collapse of reporting systems allowed a polio epidemic to spread undetected and where chemical weapons were used against civilian populations.
This work sits closer to my day job than it might appear. Both depend on the same discipline: asking whether the data in front of you actually reflects what is happening, and being willing to say so when it does not.
I gave evidence on chemical weapons attacks to the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the United States House of Representatives in 2015. With colleagues I also advised the National Rugby League and, through the International Players Association, the National Basketball Association on return-to-sport policy during the COVID-19 pandemic, and presented on the reopening of schools to the International Board of Education in Geneva.
Appointments are arranged by telephone. Many cardiology consultations and tests attract a Medicare rebate only when you have a referral from your GP — call the rooms and they will tell you what you need before you book.
Appointments and enquiries:
+61 8 6166 5790 — University Cardiology reception
For referring doctors and hospitals:
+61 8 6166 5791 — direct line
Patients, please call reception on +61 8 6166 5790.
Email:
paul@cvs.net.au
Please do not send personal health details, test results or symptoms by email — email is not a secure channel.
Consulting rooms:
University Cardiology
Unit 1, 346 Barker Road
Subiaco WA 6008
Get directions
Your referral if you have one, a list of your current medications and doses, any recent blood test or imaging results, and your Medicare card. It also helps to know whether heart disease runs in your family, and at what age.