Faculty
SASA Guest Speaker
Nuala Lucas (UK)
Kris Abbas (Canada)
Dr Sherif Abbas (Kris) completed his residency at the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium. After returning to Canada, he completed a fellowship in regional anesthesia at Toronto Western Hospital, University of Toronto. He had also completed a second fellowship in POCUS at The Ottawa Hospital, University of Ottawa. Dr Abbas is an assistant professor at McMaster University and staff Anesthesiologist at St. Joseph’s Healthcare in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.
His educational interests include regional anesthesia, Pain, point-of-care ultrasound, research in regional anesthesia & POCUS and ERAS protocols. He is very active in the undergraduate program, Anesthesia residency and regional anesthesia fellowship.
He is involved in education and teaching ultrasound-guided workshops at Various national and international conferences, like NYSORA, ASRA, ESRA and ISURA.
Isaac Adembesa Kadambi (Kenya)
Dr Isaac Adembesa is a cardiothoracic anaesthesiologist based at the Kenyatta University Teaching Referral and Research Hospital in Nairobi, Kenya. He is the Head of Department of Anaesthesia and Critical Care at KUTRRH and recently oversaw the first intake of CANECSA residents in the department. His main areas of interest is perioperative TOE and teaching basic and advanced FATE.
John Augoustides (USA)
Dr Augoustides is a Professor of Anesthesiology and Critical Care in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. His clinical focus is cardiothoracic anesthesiology and critical care with productive research interests in perioperative echocardiography, microcirculation, and thoracic aortic diseases. He serves as Vice Chair for Faculty Affairs, including recruitment, appointments, professional development, and promotions. He is a Fellow of the American Society of Echocardiography and the American Heart Association (AHA). He is a reviewer for leading cardiovascular journals, and serves on the Editorial Board for the Journal of Clinical Anesthesia, and the Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery. His also serves as a Senior Associate Editor for Kaplan’s Cardiac Anesthesia and is Associate Editor-in-Chief for the Journal of Cardiothoracic and Vascular Anesthesia. He is an invited speaker at leading venues worldwide, including the Society of Cardiovascular Anesthesiologists and World Congress of Anesthesiologists. He has published over 300 peer-reviewed papers, and is a sentinel reader for scientific literature platforms such as Faculty 1000 and the McMaster Online Rating of Evidence. He was a member of the writing committee for 2022 AHA Guideline for the Diagnosis and Management of Aortic Disease. Dr Augoustides has Greek descent and grew up in South Africa. He currently lives in the Philadelphia area with his family. His hobbies include reading, travel, and hiking.
Ghislaine Doufle (Canada)
Dr Ghislaine Douflé completed her Anesthesia and Critical Care Medicine residency in Paris, France. She subsequently enrolled in the Cardiac Anesthesia Fellowship Program of the Toronto General Hospital. She is currently appointed as Education Lead of the Medical/Surgical Intensive Care Unit at the Toronto General Hospital. Her main interest is in medical education and echocardiography, with a special focus on extracorporeal life support.
Mohamed El Tahan (Egypt)
− I was born in Egypt in 1973 and graduated with M.D. from the College of Medicine, Mansoura University, Mansoura city, in the middle of the Delta of Nile River, Egypt, in 2005.
− Since 2001, I have worked in cardiothoracic anaesthesia during my training and post-doctoral practice at Mansoura University Hospitals, Egypt.
− Subsequently, I became a consultant and an assistant professor in cardiothoracic anaesthesia at the University of Dammam, Saudi Arabia, from 2007 until 2013 and where I established the cardiac anaesthesia and surgery service in 2008.
− Currently, I am a professor in cardiothoracic anaesthesia and surgical intensive care at Mansoura University, Mansoura, Egypt, since October 2016 and an associate professor of cardiothoracicanaesthesia at the Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University (formerly, University of Dammam), Dammam, Saudi Arabia since 2013.
− My research interests are mechanical ventilation, haemodynamic monitoring, fast-track cardiac anaesthesia, airway management, aortic surgery, thoracic and obstetric anaesthesia, and gender balance. I lead international multicentre research studies like (ICARuS) through the PROVEnet group of the European Society of Anaesthesiology and Intensive Care (A multinational survey on using TEE for non-cardiac surgery) endorsed by ten intentional societies, including the World Federation of Societies of Anaesthesia, and (an international survey on gender balance among cardiothoracic anaesthesiologist) endorsed by five societies including EACTAIC. In addition, I participate in two active research groups: one at Mansoura University, Egypt, and the other at the University of Dammam, Saudi Arabia.
Joerg Ender (Germany)
Name: Professor Dr. med. Joerg Ender Institution : Department of Anesthesiology and Intensive Care Medicine, Heart Center Leipzig
Qualification:
Since 2005 Director of Department for Anesthesiology and Intensive Care Medicine, Heart Center, Leipzig
2002-2004 Director of Clinic for Anesthesiology and Intensive Care Medicine Park - Krankenhaus, Leipzig
1998-2001 Vice Director of Department for Anesthesiology and Intensive Care Medicine, Heart Center, Leipzig
1992-1998 Senior Consultant, Clinic for Anesthesiology, Julius-Maximilian-University, Wuerzburg
1990-1992 Consultant, Clinic for Anesthesiology, Julius-Maximilian-University, Wuerzburg
1986-1990 Registrar, Clinic for Anesthesiology, Julius-Maximilian-University, Wuerzburg
Designation:
2014-2019 Secretary Since 2020 Co-Chair Scientific working group „Cardiac Anesthesia“ within DGAI (German Society of Anesthesiology and Intensive Care Medicine)
2014 - 2016 EACTA Chair Scientific Committee
2017- 2018 EACTA Secretary General
Since 2020 Member of the Advisory Board of ERAS (Enhanced Recovery after Surgery) Cardiac Society
Area of Interest:
- Fasttrack Treatment
- Perioperative Echocardiography
- Transcatheter Valve ProceduresReviewer for national and international Journals:
Carolina Haylock Loor (Honduras)
Graduated as a medical doctor in Honduras before completing postgraduate training in Spain and working as an anaesthesiologist, intensivist, and interventional pain physician at San Pedro Sula, Honduras. Past President of Honduran Anesthesia Society. In 2012 in liaison with the University of Florida, she achieved the oximetry gap zeroing in Honduras as part of the WHO checklist project.
Carolina has represented the Latin American region as a council member for the World Federation of Societies of Anaesthesiologists WFSA since 2012 and Chair of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion committee. In 2020, elected as the Director of Programs of the WFSA. She’s chairing the Volume metrics group for the Utstein2 Global Surgical Health Indicators project.
She is particularly passionate about education and has taught trainees on the Honduran Anesthesiology Residency Program in Pain Management as well as promoted WFSA courses in the Latin American region, including EPM (Essential Pain Management), SAFE (Safer Anaesthesia from Education) Obstetric, SAFE Paediatric, SAFE OR (operating room), PTC (Primary Trauma Care), VAST (Vital Anesthesia Simulation Training) and VAST wellbeing module. Invited speaker for international meetings in North America, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
Carl Hillerman (UK)
Consultant Anaesthetist and Acute Pain Specialist at UHCW HNS Trust.Primary FRCA Examiner and Chair of Primary Written exam.
Priya Menon (Abu Dhabi)
I am a senior cardiac critical care consultant. I was trained in Leipzig, Germany and worked there as a senior consultant in same field for more than a decade before taking up a similar position in government hospital in Abu Dhabi in 2021. I am also an examiner for EDAIC, EDEC supervisor and an antibiotic steward expert. My special interests are TEE, ECMO and haemodynamic monitoring. I completed my MBA from HHL University, Leipzig. I have authored a few chapters in anaesthesia and critical care books and have a few publications.
Consultant Critical Care SKMC, Abu Dhabi since Nov 2020.
MBBS,MD (Anesthesia), Post Doctoral Fellowship Cardiovascular Anesthesia and Intensive care(PDCC), EACTA accredited fellowship in Advanced Cardiac Anesthesia and Critical care, EAC Diploma Adult Transesophageal Echocardiography, IACTA Honorary Fellowship Cardiovascular Anesthesia and Intensive care, EDAIC (European Diploma in Anesthesia & Intensivmedicine (DESA),German Board Anesthesia (Fachärztin Anästhesie ), German Board intensive medicine (Fachärztin Intensivmedizin), German Board Emergency medicine(Notfallmedizin), Antibiotic Stewardship Expert (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Krankenhaushygiene e.V), MBA (HHL University, Leipzig,Germany)
Andrew Murray (USA)
Dr Andrew Murray earned his MBChB at the University of Stellenbosch and completed his Anesthesia Residency and Cardiothoracic Anesthesia Fellowship at the University of Pittsburgh. He is currently the Division Chair for CardioThoracic Anesthesiology at Mayo Clinic Arizona with an interest in transesophageal echocardiography, pulmonary hypertension, and Heart and Lung transplantation. Outside of the operating room, he is interested in Environmental Sustainability in healthcare and functions as the Chair of the Green Sub-Committee at the Arizona campus.
Elmari Neethling (Canada)
Dr Elmari Neethling graduated from Stellenbosch University and completed registrar training at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. She subsequently completed both Cardiac Anesthesia and Critical Care Medicine Fellowships at the Toronto General Hospital in Canada. She currently works as a staff anesthesiologist, CVICU intensivist and assistant professor in the Department of Anesthesia and Pain Medicine at the University in Toronto, with clinical and research interests in trans esophageal echocardiography, critical care medicine, perioperative outcome and point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS).
Arno Nierich (Netherlands)
Dr Nierich is a senior consultant cardiac anesthesia & Intensive Care from The Netherlands. He wrote his PhD thesis about the implementation of Off-Pump cardiac surgery by the Octopus method. Afterwards he was senior consultant at the Isala Clinics Zwolle, one of the leading cardiac centers in the Netherlands, for 23 years till 2023. He developed several research lines with focus on echocardiography, prevention of neurologic damage related to cardiac interventions, coagulation management, and patient blood management. He was also head of Medical Innovation Isala. He is author of > 70 scientific papers, including Circulation and JAMA. Dr Nierich has shifted his clinical career to the global world as innovator and inventor of MedTech devices such as the A-View catheter and the HemoClear cell saver easy.
Bisola Onajin-Obembe (Nigeria)
Dr Onajin-Obembe is lead consultant anaesthesiologist for maxillofacial surgery, otolaryngology, and ophthalmology at University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital (UPTH), and a faculty member of Faculty of Clinical Sciences, College of Health Sciences, University of Port Harcourt, Nigeria. She is adjunct professor of change management for the International School of Management’s MBA programme at the Institute Supérieur de Gestion (ISG) Paris.
Dr Onajin-Obembe has converged her background in medicine and anaesthesiology with leadership and management to create anaesthesia workforce solutions. She is council member and board member of the World Federation of Societies of Anaesthesiologists (WFSA). She is currently the President of the Global Alliance for Surgical, Obstetric, Trauma and Anaesthesia Care (G4 Alliance), and continues to serve the Alliance as Board Director.
She is a pragmatic scientific scholar, an action researcher, and a well-known international speaker. Following her role as workforce lead, for the Federal Ministry of Health’s policy on National Surgical, Obstetrics, Anaesthesia, and Nursing Plan (NSOANP) for Nigeria, she now serves as member of the Implementation Committee for NSOANP. She was celebrated as Nigeria’s Ondo State Female Role Model and Woman of the Year in June 2022.
Angela Ongewe (Kenya)
Dr. Angela Ongewe is a Consultant General and Cardiothoracic Anaesthesiologist at the Aga Khan University Hospital Nairobi, Kenya. She is especially enthusiastic about cardiothoracic, airway and trauma anaesthesia and perioperative medicine. Alongside pursuing a masters in medical education, she serves as member of Faculty in the Department of Anaesthesia, the Assistant Programme Director for Medical Education (Masters in Medicine, Anaesthesia), Programme Coordinator for the college-wide Professional Skills Teaching and Assessment Course and Course Coordinator for the Clinical Simulation Educators Programme. She is the immediate former Treasurer for the Kenya Society of Anaesthesiologists and bears special interest in innovative clinical excellence and equitable access to quality medical education.
Cathy Price (UK)
I currently provide pain management services to Southampton working across three organisations: University Hospital Southampton Foundation Trust, Solent NHS Trust and Care UK. The focus is on people with longer term pain that is proving difficult to manage. I work as part of a multidisciplinary team.
I hold clinical, financial and performance responsibility for behaviour change, Podiatry Musculoskeletal and pain services, ensuring we get the best out of our teams and currently am responsible for merger of all of Hampshire’s community long term conditions teams.
I’m from Wales, which is where I did my medical training. I moved to Southampton to do paediatrics, then my husband got a job here! He now works as a GP where we live. I did my anaesthetic training in Cardiff, London and Wessex, followed by a pain fellowship at St Thomas’ London. I did four years as a clinical research fellow setting up a research facility in Portsmouth Pain clinic. started my consultant post in University Hospitals Southampton NHS Foundation Trust in 1999 and moved to Solent NHS Trust in 2014.
My main achievements have been completing a Multicentre Randomised Controlled Trial for HTA on the cost effectiveness of epidural steroids in sciatica and researching outcomes from pain service care to such a level that we were ran a National Pain audit project from 2009-14. I gained my MD in 2019 and Associate Professorship in 2022.
Bernhard Riedel (Australia)
Bernhard is an academic anaesthesiologist, the Director, Department of Anaesthesia, Perioperative and Pain Medicine, Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, and Professorial appointment at the University of Melbourne in Australia. Prior appointments include Professor and Deputy Chair, Anesthesiology and Intensive Care, M.D. Anderson Cancer Centre (USA); Professor of Cardiothoracic Anesthesiology, Vanderbilt University (USA); Consultant Anaesthetist, Royal Brompton & Harefield NHS Trust (UK). To address the ‘hidden pandemic’ of morbidity and death after surgery, his research is focused on improving outcomes after major surgery through enhanced preoperative risk stratification and optimization of modifiable risk. Specific to cancer surgery, he investigates the interaction of perioperative adrenergic-inflammatory response and anaesthetic technique on tumour-progression/recurrence. His research program has resulted in research grants (>$14M), >200 peer-reviewed scientific publications (including: Lancet, New England Journal Medicine, JAMA, Cancer Research, Nature Reviews, British Journal Anaesthesia), and has been cited >3,000 times. He has edited three books, including ‘Acute Care of the Cancer Patient’. Bernhard has delivered >200 lectures at national/international conferences and effective mentorship has resulted in numerous awards to team members for clinical service, quality improvement, and research.
Robert Sladen (USA)
Prof. Sladen graduated from the University of Cape Town Medical School in 1970, receiving the University Gold Medal for best graduate. He trained in internal medicine in South Africa and England, anaesthesiology at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, and critical care medicine at Stanford University. Prof. Sladen is boarded in anaesthesiology and critical care medicine and is a Fellow of the American College of Critical Care Medicine (FCCM).
Prof. Sladen practiced cardiac anaesthesiology and critical care medicine at Stanford and Duke Universities before joining Columbia University in 1997. At Columbia he served as Executive Vice-Chair of Anesthesiology, Chief of the Division of Critical Care Medicine, Medical Director of the Cardiothoracic and Surgical Intensive Care Units and Medical Director of Respiratory Therapy.
During his tenure as Program Director of the Anesthesiology Critical Care Medicine (ACCM) Fellowship, Prof. Sladen trained more than 100 ACCM Fellows and served as President of the Association of Anesthesiology Subspecialty Program Directors (AASPD).
Prof. Sladen is a member of the Virginia Apgar Teaching Academy at Columbia; and is a recipient of the Society of Critical Care Medicine’s Shubin-Weil Master Clinician Award. He served as Chair of the Board of Trustees of the International Anesthesia Research Society (IARS) and is the recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society of Critical Care Anesthesiologists (SOCCA) and Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Cardiovascular Anesthesiologists (SCA). In 2015 Prof. Sladen was elected Physician of the Year at Columbia University Medical Center and became the first incumbent of the Allen Hyman Professorship of Critical Care Anesthesiology. In 2019 Prof. Sladen was elected an Emeritus Member of the Columbia University College of Physicians & Surgeons Academy of Clinical Excellence.
Prof. Sladen retired from clinical practice at the end of 2015 but continues to be active in voluntary teaching, mentorship, organizational consulting, clinical research and academic interaction.