David S. Winlaw MBBS(Hons) MD FRACS

Pediatric Cardiac Surgeon

Hello and welcome. I am a paediatric cardiac surgeon at The Children’s Hospital at Westmead and Professor in Paediatric Cardiac Surgery at the University of Sydney. I provide care for children and adolescents with all forms of congenital heart disease.

I completed my Australian Fellowship in adult cardiac surgery at St Vincent’s Hospital, Sydney, including adult heart and lung transplantation and then subspecialised in paediatric cardiac surgery, working in Sydney and the United Kingdom. I wanted to focus my skills in paediatric surgery because of the unique environment where we collaborate with parents and the large clinical team to the get the best outcomes for children and their families.

On returning to The Children’s Hospital at Westmead, I led the introduction of the Norwood procedure and focused on the development of neonatal surgical techniques.

Understanding and improving outcomes is an important part of my work, through quality assurance programs and clinical research. I am working on a number of projects that I hope will change the way we manage some conditions, so that fewer operations are required. We have made a number of breakthroughs in our understanding of the genetics of congenital heart disease and continue this work in collaboration with The Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute.

I want children to have the best possible futures and that starts with providing quality care for them and their families. Our team includes parents, cardiologists, intensive care doctors and nurses, psychologists and genetic counsellors. Helping children and families through big operations and seeing them get back to normal life as quickly as possible is the most rewarding part of my job.

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