SPECIALTY AND TITLE

Cardiology
Perioperative Care
Full Professor
Director of the Division of Perioperative Care, McMaster University

HOSPITAL AFFILIATIONS

Hamilton Health Sciences

Saint Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton

UNIVERSITY AFFILIATIONS

McMaster University

AREA OF RESEARCH

Worldwide over 230 million adults undergo major surgery annually. Although surgery can prolong and improve quality of life, annually millions of adults will suffer a serious perioperative medical complication. Surgery with its associated trauma, anesthesia and analgesia, intubation and extubation, pain, hypothermia, bleeding and anemia, and fasting is analogous to an extreme stress test. These factors initiate inflammatory, hypercoagulable, hypoxic, and stress states that are associated with perioperative vascular complications. Currently, the patient population undergoing surgery is substantially older and has more comorbid disease (e.g., atherosclerosis) compared to patients having surgery 2 decades ago.

Dr. Devereaux has focused my research program on major perioperative vascular complications for the following reasons: 1.it represents a major national and global population problem; 2. it is a neglect area of research; 3. it brings together researchers from many disciplines (e.g., cardiology, anesthesiology, surgery, neurology, thrombosis) creating an exciting environment with cross fertilization of knowledge; and 4. there is enormous potential to make advances and improve the health of patients.

MAJOR CONTRIBUTIONS TO SCIENCE AND/OR HEALTH CARE DELIVERY

Dr. Devereaux leads a large international research program in perioperative care across >300 centres in >30 countries. He has successfully completed many large, international, research studies that have influenced care in Canada and globally. He has published the results of these studies in the highest impact medical journals (his h-index is now 116), and he has presented the results all over the world. He has also trained and mentored many outstanding investigators who have or are becoming international leaders in anesthesiology, perioperative care, and surgical research.