Dr Heather Cooke

Dr Heather Cooke is a specialist cardiologist and graduate of the University of Sydney who briefly worked in Newcastle in 2011 and fell in love with the area. Dr Cooke joined Newcastle Heart with Dr Rohan Bhagwandeen in July 2015.

Dr Cooke is a registered specialist with the FRACP and a member of both the American and Canadian Societies of Echocardiography.

After completing her general cardiology training in Queensland, she undertook the first of two fellowships in cardiac imaging at the prestigious Peter Munk Cardiac Centre in Toronto, Canada. The first in advanced echocardiography including contrast imaging, 3D echocardiography and strain imaging. Dr Cooke has performed over 500 transesophageal echocardiograms with 3D echocardiograph acquisition.

Furthering her interest in cardiac imaging, and particularly the role of imaging in coronary artery disease, Dr Cooke undertook a second fellowship in Nuclear cardiology, also in Toronto Canada. During this fellowship she acquired proficiency in the supervision and interpretation of both technetium and thallium SPECT stress imaging for both the purpose of diagnosis and prognostic purposes in CAD. She trained in radionuclide angiography for diagnosis of heart failure and to guide cardiac device placement therapies.

During her intense training in imaging labs, Dr Cooke retained her clinical skills by working in the heart failure clinic. Her work focused on patients requiring advanced heart failure therapies and work up to left ventricular assist devices and to cardiac transplantation. Through this period, she was exposed to many different cardiomyopathies including ischemic, idiopathic, viral, chemotherapeutic, post-partum, familial and genetic.