Consultant Cardiologist, Heart Care Partners, Brisbane

Director of Echocardiography, The Prince Charles Hospital

Associate Professor of Medicine, The University of Queensland

Associate Professor of Medicine, Bond University

Professor, Central Queensland University

Prof. Scalia has participated in all elements the discipline of echocardiography. The clinical application of echo to everyday patient care with transthoracic echo for structural assessment, stress echo for coronary disease and transesophag al echo for high resolution assessment of infection, and other detail, has been the main focus of his medical career for 20 years.

As a sub-specialty, transesophageal echo during cardiac surgery, and more recently cath-lab based trans-catheter structural interventions has been a major focus for me. This began at the Cleveland Clinic (Ohio, USA) in 1995, where he participated extensively in the Heart Failure Surgery unit as an Intra­ operative Echocardiographer for two years. This involved participation in approximately 60 implantable left ventricular assist devices (HeartMate) and subsequent transplantation.

In 1996, a radical new procedure - The Batista Left Ventricular Remodeling procedure began being performed at the Cleveland Clinic. This operation involved resection of a large segment of the ventricular myocardium in patients with dilated cardiomyopathy. The initial results were encouraging and served as a stepping stone for future heart failure surgeries over next 20 years. Prof. Scalia also participated in the Maze surgery for atrial fibrillation, which served as a precursor for our now commonly performed percutaneous he published and presented data regarding left atrial function in these early patients in 1996, and have gone to participate in modern day minimally invasive evolutions of this discipline.

From 1998, he has been involved in the structural heart interventional cardiology programs at The Prince Charles Hospital, The Wesley Hospital and the Mater Children's Hospital. Specifically, he has been involved in the percutaneous closure of atrial septal defects, ventricular septal defects and most recently paravalvar defects with Amplatzer and other devices. He have performed echocardiography (Transoesophageal and intracardiac) on several hundred of these cases.

Prof. Scalia has provided advanced 3D echocardiography services from the first case of percutaneous AVR (TAVI) in 2008. These cases have utilized the CORE and SAPIEN valves from transfemoral, transapical and transaortic routes.

Since 2011, Prof. Scalia has been the principal echocardiographer for the transcutaneous mitral valve repair program, utilizing the MitraClip device at TPCH. He has undertaken numerous lectures and training sessions on this technology. He has participated in several national and global advisory boards with the Abbott Vascular Structural Heart program. In late 2015, Prof. Scalia was involved as principle echocardiographer in the ground-breaking implantation of the world's first percutaneous mitral valve replacement with the Tendyne device. In June 2017, he participated in the first-in-man implantation of the PASCAL mitral repair device at TPCH.