Zsolt Balogh is a HMRI and University of Newcastle researcher and an internationally-renowned leader in surgical, trauma and musculoskeletal research, education and clinical care.
View Zsolt's research outputs on his University of Newcastle profile >
Professor Zsolt Balogh is an international leader in surgical, trauma and musculoskeletal research, education and clinical care.
He is the Discipline Head of Traumatology and Surgery at the School of Medicine and Public Health, University of Newcastle, the Director of Trauma at John Hunter Hospital and Hunter New England Local Health District. He also leads the Injury and Trauma Research Program at HMRI.
Professor Balogh is a busy practicing trauma and orthopaedic surgeon with a major interest and expertise in complex polytrauma patient management, traumatic shock resuscitation, postinjury multiple organ failure and pelvic and acetabulum fracture patients.
Dr Balogh is the recipient of Australia’s most prestigious surgical research award, the John Mitchell Crouch fellowship of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons and the Australian Orthopaedic Associations Research Award. Zsolt was also announced as the top researcher of Australia in the field of Emergency Medicine; 2020 and 2021 The Australian – Report on Research.
With over 300 peer-reviewed publications, more than 25,000 citations, and a h-Index of 66 (as of August 2023), Dr Balogh’s research covers many areas of trauma care such as polytrauma, traumatic shock resuscitation, multiple organ failure, pelvic and acetabular fractures, orthopaedic trauma, torso trauma and post injury critical care.
Dr Balogh is dedicated to continuing his contribution to the scientific community via avenues such as Editor-in-Chief, Deputy Editor-in-Chief, Editor and Associate Editor of leading surgical and critical care journals and attending as a regularly invited speaker grant reviewer for leading national and international professional bodies.
My aim is to get polytrauma recognized as a disease (see relevant Editorial) by the community, health care professionals, policy makers and by the World Health Organisation. This will provide the necessary attention and focus on the prevention, treatment, and research on the most severely injured patients.
With our Program we are working on every possible angle of injury and trauma from prevention to rehabilitation.
My special focus is to understand the cellular and molecular mechanisms of how kinetic energy causes systemic inflammation and auto-destruction in living organisms and apply specific preventive and counteracting interventions.
I am fascinated by the 2 billion years symbiotic relationship of our cells with mitochondria, which are governing our cellular energetics, cell division and cell death. We are developing a comprehensive program to restore injured cell, tissue and organ functions by restoring/reprogramming mitochondrial health.
During my childhood I saw the everyday carnage on roads, deaths of friends in car crashes and saved my mother from exsanguination at the age of 7. I wanted to study how the impact of major injury and blood loss, can be reversed.
Trauma surgery and the research of injuries came naturally to me and I was preparing for it systematically from late primary school. It was also inspirational to study medical biochemistry in the laboratories where Albert Szent-Györgyi, Nobel Laurate in Medicine and Physiology related to biological combustion, vitamin-C and fumaric acid catalysis, used to work.
I prefer to use the word “search” rather than “re-search” because it means to me something more original and looks beyond the obvious. I would like to understand life and would like to have humans to live in harmony with nature. I believe a trauma scientist is just a biologist specialised to injured humans.
