Research at Epworth

Professor Richard de Steiger
richard.desteiger@epworth.org.au

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+61 3 9936 8054

Research Overview

The principal research interests of the Department of Surgery at Epworth HealthCare are focused on musculoskeletal disease. The Department is relatively new and considerable time has been invested in forging strong collaborations with other University of Melbourne disciplines. There are three broad areas of research; inflammatory mechanisms of knee osteoarthritis, biomechanics of healthy and replaced knee joints and health services and patient outcomes.

The Epworth Musculoskeletal Research Centre has been formed with access to on site laboratories. This has enabled synovial, bone and articular cartilage tissue collection for ongoing study in several areas including osteoarthritis research, prostate cancer linkage and articular cartilage biomechanical models.

Health services research in the musculoskeletal is an expanding area. Our group has focused on knee and hip arthroscopy and looking at lifetime risk of joint replacement at a state, national and an international level. Ongoing projects include determining osteoarthritis following sports injury and the burden of revision joint replacement surgery. In collaboration with Professor Nilmini Wickramasinghe we have developed a group to look at machine learning and to develop intelligent risk detection methods to improve outcomes in hip and knee replacement. The Department of Surgery has an ongoing collaboration with Professor Mari Botti, investigating best practice for pain management following joint replacement and interventions for improving patient surgical experience with the use of multimedia applications.

An ARC Linkage Grant has helped build a world class gait laboratory and there are several projects currently under way investigating articular cartilage, gait in normal volunteers and gait changes following interventions with total knee arthroplasty.