Wollongong Private Hospital is celebrating the appointment of the Illawarra-Shoalhaven region's first cardiothoracic surgeon, whose arrival means local residents will no longer have to travel to Sydney for specialist heart, lung or chest treatment.
Dr Mohammad R Azari is an Australian-trained surgeon with special interest in complex coronary surgeries, who has worked around the country and also in the United Kingdom.
He started patient consultations at Wollongong in August 2021 as part of a Public Private Partnership between the hospital and the Illawarra-Shoalhaven Local Health District.
"Dr Azari's arrival means that, for the first time, we can offer the full spectrum of cardiac and thoracic surgical care to patients in the Illawarra," Wollongong Private Hospital CEO Steven Rajcany said.
"To have Dr Azari consulting here at Wollongong Private less than three months after the Public Private Partnership was first announced is fantastic, and we look forward to expanding the team with additional surgeons in the coming weeks."
Dr Azari is experienced in performing aortic, heart valve and arrhythmia surgeries, and is a fully-trained, minimally-invasive thoracic surgeon specialising in thoracoscopic surgery and robotic thoracic surgery.
"It's very exciting, I'm very proud that this service can finally happen locally and I'm honoured to be a part of it. I know a lot of people have put in a lot of good work to make it happen," Dr Azari said.
"We have assembled a great team of very experienced professionals from anaesthetists to scrub nurses, and all of the equipment and instruments purchased are state-of-the-art." he said.
