Dr Alex Veldman

Research Clinician

The Ritchie Centre

Dr Alex Veldman graduated in Medicine from the J.W. Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany, and completed an internship with a pediatric rotation at the Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, Canada. He then returned to the J.W. Goethe University Hospital for a six-year training program in general pediatrics, leading to board certification in Pediatrics in 2004, before enrolling in a Fellowship in neonatology for which he was board certified as a neonatologist in 2005. He then worked at the J. Liebig University Hospital in Giessen, Germany, where he completed training in pediatric cardiology in 2007.

Dr Veldman is Consultant Neonatologist in Monash Newborn and Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Medicine at Monash University. He also holds an honorary appointment as Associate Professor of Pediatrics (Privatdozent) at the J. Liebig University in Giessen, Germany.

Dr Veldman completed his MD in 1997 on the subject of high frequency oscillatory ventilation before developing a keen interest in coagulation, especially as it relates to the critical ill pediatric and neonatal patient. His group’s innovative work on protein C substitution in children with meningococcal sepsis significantly improved the management of these patients.

In 2002, Dr Veldman's report on the use of activated recombinant coagulation factor VII in preterm neonates with massive hemorrhage led to this treatment becoming adopted as the mainstay treatment option. Dr Veldman continues his novel approaches to the treatment of the prevalent diseases of the newborn infant in a study evaluating the use of Protein C and IL1Ra in experimental neonatal chronic lung disease, which afflicts one third of all infants born before 32 weeks gestation.

Additionally, Dr Veldman's group together with Professor Guenter Schwarz from Cologne, Germany, pioneered a treatment for a previously fatal metabolic disease, Molybdenum Cofactor Deficiency. This work resulted in babies all over the world receiving rescue treatment for this condition and an international phase I/II study being designed.

Dr Veldman is editor of the internet platform www.sepDIC.eu, a comprehensive resource on pathophysiology, treatment and education on sepsis related coagulation disturbances, a member of the Society of Critical Care Medicine, the International Society of Thrombosis and Hemostasis, the Society of Pediatric Research and the German Society of Neonatology and Pediatric Intensive Care Medicine.