Professor Kumud Dhital Director of Cardiothoracic Surgery & Transplantation at The Alfred

Professor Kumud Dhital has recently joined the Alfred Hospital as the Director of Cardiothoracic Surgery & Transplantation as well as Program Director of Alfred Heart & Lung.

Following a science degree in Physiology and Biochemistry with a subsequent PhD in Anatomy at the University of London, Kumud Dhital qualified in medicine at the University of Oxford with Cardiothoracic surgical training in the UK at various institutions including John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, the Royal Brompton and Guy’s & St Thomas’ Hospitals in London, before a transplant fellowship at Papworth Hospital, Cambridge.

Between 2003-2005, he worked for the University of Pittsburgh Medical Centre (UPMC, USA) as Assistant Professor of Surgery and the Director of a new Heart & Lung Transplant program which he helped to establish in Palermo, Italy for the Mediterranean Institute for Advanced Therapies (IsMeTT). He subsequently returned to Papworth Hospital as a consultant cardiothoracic & transplant surgeon and Director Lung Transplantation. In 2009 he moved to a similar position at St Vincent’s Hospital, Sydney, Australia. In Sydney, he was an Associate Professor of Surgery at the University of New Wales and on the Faculty at the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute (VCCRI). Together with Prof Peter Macdonald, the Director of Heart Transplantation, they developed the donation after circulatory death (DCD) heart transplant program.  In July 2014, Prof Dhital performed the world’s first heart transplant with a distantly procured DCD heart. He was the lead surgeon for the St Vincent's Hospital's DCD heart transplant program which to date has performed 28 successful transplants from this donation pathway.

Beyond his interest in surgery for cardio-pulmonary failure, he provides a comprehensive cardiac and thoracic surgical practice including pulmonary endarterectomy for Chronic Thromboembolic Pulmonary Hypertension. Prof Dhital has also had significant teaching responsibilities for medical students and junior surgeons. This has been complemented with a basic and translational research program with supervision of higher degree research students as co-director of the Transplant Laboratory at the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute.