Medical Staff Profiles

Professor Jeffrey V. Rosenfeld,
Director of Neurosurgery

Professor Jeffrey V. Rosenfeld, Director

Jeffrey V. Rosenfeld AM, CStJMB BS(Melb), MD(Monash), MS(Melb), FRACS, FRCS(Edin), FACS, FRCS(Glasg) Hon, FCNST Hon, FRCST Hon, FACTM, MRACMA, RAAMC
Professor and Head, Department of Surgery, Central Clinical School, Monash University,Professor and Director, Department of Neurosurgery, Alfred Hospital and Monash University Director, Monash University Brain Institute

Professor Jeffrey Rosenfeld graduated in medicine from the University of Melbourne in 1976.  He completed general surgery training in Melbourne, and then undertook neurosurgical training.  He completed post-fellowship training at the Radcliffe Infirmary, Oxford, UK and was Chief Resident in Neurological Surgery at The Cleveland Clinic Foundation, Ohio, USA.  On his return to Australia in 1988, he was appointed Consultant Neurosurgeon to The Royal Melbourne Hospital and the Royal Children's Hospital and undertook a two year laboratory research fellowship at the Walter & Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, investigating neural transplantation in mice, obtaining the Master of Surgery degree from the University of Melbourne in 1992.  He was awarded the Syme Medal and Syme Professorship of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh for this research.  He was awarded a King James IV Professorship for 2002 of the Royal College of Surgeons Edinburgh for hypothalamic hamartoma surgery in children with gelastic epilepsy.   Professor Rosenfeld is an international leader in surgery for hypothalamic hamartoma.  

Professor Rosenfeld was co-principal investigator on the first multi-centre randomised controlled trial of decompressive craniectomy for patients with severe diffuse traumatic brain injury and is a Principal Investigator on the Monash University Bionic Eye Project which was awarded $8 million by the Australian Research Council in 2009.  

Professor Rosenfeld was awarded the John Mitchell Crouch Fellowship of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons (RACS) for 2004 which is the most prestigious research award of the RACS.   He was awarded Honorary Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons (Glasgow) ad eundum in March 2008 and Honorary Fellowship of the College of Neurosurgeons of Thailand 2011.  He was awarded Honorary Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons of Thailand in July 2011.  Professor Rosenfeld was awarded Membership of the Order of Australia in the Queens Birthday Honours June 2011. 

Professor Rosenfeld specialises in cerebrovascular surgery (aneurysms, arterio-venous malformations), brain tumour and skull base surgery, minimal access and neuro-endoscopic surgery.  Professor Rosenfeld has been an invited visiting professor in the UK, USA, China, Japan, Thailand, India, Vietnam, Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Singapore and Israel and has developed a keen interest in developing specialist medical services, particularly neurosurgery, to the developing world.  He has visited PNG, Fiji and the Solomon Islands multiple times for the AusAid funded Pacific Islands Project (PIP) to perform neurosurgery and teach.  He was awarded The Sally Harrington Goldwater Memorial Visiting Professor Award from the Barrow Neurological Foundation, Phoenix, Arizona, USA in February 2003 and the LD Hupp Visiting Professorship in Paediatric Neurosurgery, University of Florida, Gainesville, USA in August 2004.  He was awarded the Asian/Australasian Travelling Fellowship of the Neurosurgical Society of Australasia in 1995.  His book entitled ‘Neurosurgery in the Tropics: a practical approach to common problems’ co-authored with David A K Watters, was published in 2000 by Macmillan, London and ‘Practical Management of Head and Neck Injury’ Editor Jeffrey Rosenfeld, publisher Elsevier is in press 2012. He has authored over 220 publications, and has been appointed to the Editorial Board of five international journals. 

Professor Rosenfeld has spearheaded the development of a new Neuroscience Institute at Monash University to be named Monash University Brain Institute (MUBI). He was appointed Professor and Head, Department of Surgery, Central and Eastern Clinical School, Monash University February 2006. Professor Rosenfeld was appointed the Professor/Director of Neurosurgery at the Alfred Hospital and Monash University in October 2000.  He was Head of the Department of Neurosurgery at the Monash Medical Centre and Prince Henry's Hospital in Melbourne, 1990-1993.  He was Deputy Director, Neurosurgery Department, The Royal Melbourne Hospital 1993-2000 and Director, Neurosurgery Department at the Royal Children's Hospital, 1996-2000. He was Associate Professor, in the Departments of Paediatrics and Surgery at The University of Melbourne. He is a Fellow of the Australasian College of Tropical Medicine and is an instructor on the Definitive Surgery for Trauma Course (DSTC), and has instructed on the Early Management of Severe Trauma (EMST) course, and the Mobile Intensive Care Ambulance Officers (MICA) course.  

Professor Rosenfeld was appointed Professor of Neurosurgery (Honorary) at the University of Papua New Guinea in 2000, Honorary Consultant Neurosurgeon at the Children’s Hospital at Westmead NSW in 2003 and Honorary Professor of the Neurosurgical Department of the Beijing Tiantan Hospital and of the Capital University of Medical Sciences, Beijing, China in September 2005. He was awarded an Honorary membership of the Indian Neurotrauma Society. He was appointed Acting Chairman Department of Surgery Central and Eastern Clinical School Monash University in April 2004 to 2006.  He was appointed to the Ethics in Neurosurgery & Medico-Legal Affairs Committee in 2006 the Education Committee in 2009 and the Neurotrauma Committee in 2010 of the World Federation of Neurosurgical Societies (WFNS). He became Chairman, Division of Surgery, The Alfred Hospital, and a member of the Bayside Health Executive Committee 2006 to 2009. 

Professor Rosenfeld has a particular academic and clinical interest in neurotrauma and is a Member of the National Trauma Committee, the Victorian Trauma Committee and the Victorian Road Trauma Committee, Royal Australasian College of Surgeons (RACS).  From 2000 to 2003, he was appointed by the Minister for Health to serve on the State Trauma Committee (Victoria).  He was also a member of the Ministerial Working Party and Task Force on Emergency Services and Trauma, Victoria, serves on the Consultative Committee on Road Traffic Fatalities, and was the Chairman of the Trauma Committee of the Neurosurgical Society of Australasia (NSA) 2000-2005.  He was appointed to the Medical Standards Committee of the Metropolitan Ambulance Service in 2003. He has also been appointed to the executive of the NSA, and the Board of Neurosurgery of the RACS, was elected to the State Committee of the RACS in 1998, and was elected Vice-Chairman of this committee in 2000, has been on the Management Committee of the Pacific Island Project (PIP) since 1999, and has been on the International Committee of the RACS since 1999.  He was appointed Chairman of the International Committee of the NSA in 1999.  He was appointed an Examiner in Neurosurgery to the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons and Member of Court of Examiners May 2005 and was appointed to the Board of Neurosciences Victoria in June 2005 and to the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Victorian Neuroscience Initiative in February 2007.  He was appointed Chairman of the Steering Committee of the NET Program: Neurotrauma Evidence Translation of the National Trauma Research Institute (NTRI) in December 2009.  He was appointed a member of the Psychosurgery Review Board of the Victorian Government 2009.  He was appointed a member of the Defence Health Foundation Medical Research Advisory Committee in 2010.  He was appointed Honorary Clinical Research Fellow, Bionic Institute, University of Melbourne 2012. 

Associate Professor Peter Hwang
Neurosurgeon, Alfred Hospital & Adjunct Clinical Associate Professor, Monash University Medical School

Associate Professor Peter Hwang

Telephone:  9076 3716

Qualifications:

M.B,B.S; FRACS; FRCS.Ed; FRCS(Glasg); FCSS; FAMS

Description:

Associate Professor Peter Hwang graduated from the faculty of medicine, National University of Singapore. He pursued training first in general surgery and was awarded the Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh in 1993, and the Fellowship of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow in 1993.

He trained in neurosurgery in Singapore, Sydney and Adelaide in Australia, and obtained the Fellowship of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons in 1998. He returned to Singapore, was certified by the Singapore Board of Neurosurgery, and is a Fellow of the College of Surgeons of Singapore.

He was appointed Consultant Neurosurgeon at the National Neuroscience Institute in Singapore, and served as Consultant Neurosurgeon to the Singapore General Hospital, the Tan Tock Seng Hospital, the National University Hospital, and the Changi General Hospital.

He undertook further sub-specialty training in skull base and cerebrovascular surgery with Professor Takanori Fukushima at the Carolina Neuroscience Institute and Skull Base Centre, USA; in Germany at the Johannes-Gutenberg University Neurosurgery Department in Mainz, the foremost minimally invasive neurosurgery centre in Europe, under the leadership of Professor Axel Perneczky; and with Professor Hae-dong Jho at the Jho Institute for minimally invasive neurosurgery at the Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh, USA.

He has served with the First Commando Battalion of the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF), and holds the rank of Major in the SAF Medical Corps.

He was received as a Fellow of the Academy of Medicine of Singapore in 2005.

He joined the Alfred Hospital, Melbourne, Australia in November 2006 as Consultant Neurosurgeon, and has also been appointed Adjunct Clinical Associate Professor for the Department of Surgery, Central Clinical School, Faculty of Medicine, Nursing & Health Sciences at Monash University Medical School.

He has a deep interest in cerebrovascular, brain tumour and skull base neurosurgery. He is also active in developing new, innovative and minimally invasive techniques for neurosurgery, and in promoting and developing new technologies for neurosurgery.

He has published his work in all the major international neurosurgical journals, including Neurosurgery, Journal of Neurosurgery, Acta Neurochirugica, and Surgical Neurology.

He has instructed at several courses, seminars and workshops, including as Co-Director of the Australian Advanced Neuro Endoscopy workshops, honoured guest speaker at the Academy of Filipino Neurosurgeons’ Annual Scientific Meeting, and honoured main speaker at the Tianjin Medical College Neurosurgery Update in China.

Mr Patrick Chan,
Consultant Neurosurgeon

Telephone:  9076 3716

Qualifications:

MBBS, MD, FRACS

Description:

Mr Patrick Chan graduated with Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery from The University of Melbourne, Victoria in 1995 and was admitted to the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons (Neurosurgery) in 2006. In the same year, he was also conferred the postgraduate degree of Doctorate of Medicine from the University of Melbourne for his thesis on surgery and neuro-imaging in epilepsy.

During 2006-2007, he completed the Complex Spine Fellowship from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver General Hospital. He is one of a few neurosurgeons in Victoria that successfully received a Combined Orthopaedic and Neurosurgery Spine Fellowship. 

Mr Chan's professional practice and interests include complex and minimally invasive spinal surgery on trauma, tumour and degenerative spinal diseases, as well as brain tumour and trauma surgery.

His national and international publications and presentations include topics on spinal trauma and tumour surgery, epilepsy surgery, and brain tumours.

He is a member of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons, the Neurosurgical Society of Australasia, Spine Society of Australia and the Australian Medical Association.

He consults on public patients at the Alfred Hospital Neurosurgical Clinic, and private patients at 517 St Kilda Road, Melbourne, and also at the Epworth Centre consulting rooms. 

He operates at The Alfred, Epworth Hospital and The Avenue hospitals.

Mr John McMahon,
Consultant Neurosurgeon

Mr John McMahon,
Consultant Neurosurgeon

Telephone:  9076 3716

Qualifications:

MBBS (Hons); FRACS

Description

Mr John McMahon graduated with honours from Monash University, Victoria in 1990 and was admitted to the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons (Neurosurgery) in 2000.  Following this, he received the Cerebrovascular fellowship from the University of Texas, South-western Medical Centre, Dallas, Texas, USA, which he completed over 2000-2001.

He was awarded the DS Rosengarten Surgical Trainee Research Prize at the Alfred Hospital in 1996 and has since held consultant positions at the Alfred Hospital, Austin Hospital, Cabrini Medical Centre, Epworth Hospital, and Albury/Wodonga Specialist Centre.  He is also a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Surgery, Monash University.

Mr McMahon's professional interests include cerebrovascular surgery, aneurysms, arteriovenous malformations, cavernomas, carotid occlusive disease, trigeminal neuralgia, intracranial tumours and spinal surgery.  His research interest lies in arteriovenous malformations, and he has recently published several articles on the topic.  He was recently a faculty member for the posterior circulation aneurysm workshop at the Congress of Neurological Surgeons (USA).

He is a member of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons, the Neurosurgical Society of Australasia, Australian Medical Association, Congress of Neurological Surgeons (USA), American Association of Neurological Surgeons and AANS/CNS Section of Cerebrovascular Surgery (USA).

He consults on public patients at the Alfred Hospital and Austin Hospital, and privately at Cabrini Medical Centre, Suite 53, 183 Wattletree Road, Malvern, and 95 Southernview Drive, Albury.

Mr Niki Maartens,
Consultant Neurosurgeon

Mr Niki Maartens, Consultant Neurosurgeon

Telephone: 9076 3716

Qualifications:

MBChB, FRACS, FRCS, FRCS (surgical Neurology)

Description:

Mr Maartens graduated MBCHB at the University of Cape Town. After completing internship and a year as a neurosurgical SHO at Groote Schuur Hospital, Cape Town under Kaye De Villiers, he underwent basic surgical training at the John Ratcliffe Hospital, Oxford, and the Royal Post-Graduate Medical School, Hammersmith Hospital, London, obtaining an FRCS.  He then became a neurosurgical registrar at the Ratcliffe infirmary in Oxford under Mr Chris Adams.  During this time, he returned to South Africa to complete a year of trauma neurosurgical training and paediatric neurosurgery at Groote Schuur Hospital and Red Cross War Memorial Children's Hospital respectively.  After obtaining the intercollegiate FRCS in surgical neurology, he developed an interest in pituitary surgery before spending a year at the University of Virginia Health Sciences Centre in Charlottesville, U.S.A. as a pituitary neuroendocrine fellow under Prof Ed Laws and Prof John Jane Sr.  He then obtained a consultant position at the Royal Melbourne Hospital and an honorary fellowship in the Department of Surgery at Melbourne University, where he practiced for nine years with Prof Andrew Kaye and Acting Prof Rob Briggs before transferring to the Alfred Hospital in August 2010.

He has a valuable collection of neurosurgical teaching slides and has 25 peer reviewed publications, and more than ten published book chapters, mainly dealing with aspects of pituitary neuroendocrine surgery.

His interests include endoscopic and open pituitary base of skull, complex spine and cranial microsurgery.

Dr Maartens consults publicly at the Alfred Hospital and privately at Chelsea House, Suite 208, 55 Flemington Road, North Melbourne.