André van Zundert (anaesthesiologist)
André van Zundert (MD, DM, PhD, MSc, FHEA, FRCA, FASRA, FRSM, EDRA, FANZCA) is a Belgian-born anaesthesiologist and academic. He is Professor and Chair of the Discipline of Anaesthesiology at the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital (RBWH) and a Professor of Medicine at the University of Queensland. He also serves as Chair of the RBWH Burns, Trauma and Critical Care Research Centre and the RBWH and University of Queensland Centre for Excellence and Innovation in Anaesthesia. He has been an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Anaesthetists since 2018.
Education
Van Zundert earned his Doctor in Medicine, Surgery and Obstetrics from the University of Leuven in 1978 and his PhD from the University of Leyden in 1985. He obtained a Doctor of Medicine by Research degree from the University of Queensland in 2024.
Academic career
From 1983 to 2013, he was Professor of Anaesthesiology, Intensive Care and Pain Therapy at Catharina Hospital in Eindhoven, Netherlands. During the same period, he was a professor at Fontys University of Applied Sciences in Eindhoven. He also served as Director of Anaesthesia Training at Catharina Hospital from 1995 to 2013. Van Zundert held academic positions at the University of Antwerp (1995-2002), the University of Ghent (2001-2018), Maastricht University (2009-2018) and Victoria University in Melbourne (2016-2019).
In 2013, he was appointed Professor and Head of the Discipline of Anaesthesiology at the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital and Professor in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Queensland. He is also Adjunct Professor at Queensland University of Technology and Honorary Professor at the Queensland Brain Institute. He is a Visiting Professor at Udayana University in Denpasar, Bali, Indonesia.
He served as Secretary-General (1989-2000) and President (2000-2003) of the European Society of Regional Anaesthesia and Pain Therapy. Van Zundert founded the European Diploma in Regional Anaesthesia and Pain Therapy, serving as its first chairperson from 2006 to 2010. He is also a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy in the United Kingdom and Australia.
Research
Van Zundert has authored over 500 scientific publications and more than 80 book chapters, and has contributed to a number of standard medical textbooks, including Pain Relief and Anesthesia in Obstetrics (1996), the Highlights in Regional Anaesthesia and Pain Therapy series, Atlas of Functional Anatomy for Regional Anesthesia and Pain Medicine (2015), Regional Nerve Blocks (2017), Brain Informatics (2022), and Evidence-Based Guide on Difficult Airway Management (2025). He also co-authored Anesthesiology Manual Handbook and The History of the European Society of Regional Anaesthesia: Crossing Boundaries, Transformational Care. His research has focused on general and regional anaesthesia, airway management and the discovery of the working mechanisms of general anaesthetics, including reversal agents.
In the 1980s and 1990s, he co-authored studies on epidural test dosing and methods to detect inadvertent intravascular or intrathecal catheter placement in labour analgesia. In 1997, he co-authored descriptions of combined spinal-epidural techniques and, in 2006, introduced a new technique, i.e., segmental thoracic spinal anaesthesia, for high-risk surgical patients. His subsequent regional anaesthesia work has included neuraxial techniques, peripheral nerve blocks, ophthalmic regional blocks and ultrasound-guided techniques.
He has published on videolaryngoscopy and supraglottic airway devices, including recommendations to avoid palatopharyngeal trauma, evaluations of videolaryngoscope performance and an algorithm for videolaryngoscope-guided management of suboptimally positioned supraglottic airway devices. In 2024, he co-authored a review in Anesthesia & Analgesia titled Supraglottic Airway Devices: Present State and Outlook for 2050, which examined limitations of blind insertion techniques for supraglottic airway devices and discussed the development and clinical application of vision-guided and video-incorporated laryngeal mask airways. Studies have reported malpositioning rates of up to 50-80% with blind insertion techniques, and his work has addressed strategies aimed at improving placement accuracy, safety, and documentation in anaesthetic practice. In 2025, he co-authored European guidelines on strategies for the universal implementation of videolaryngoscopy, published in the European Journal of Anaesthesiology.
In collaboration with researchers at the Queensland Brain Institute, he has investigated synaptic and presynaptic mechanisms of general anaesthetic action, including work on syntaxin-1A, and potential reversal strategies to improve recovery after anaesthesia.
Awards and recognition
In 2025, van Zundert received the Carl Koller Gold Medal Award from the European Society of Regional Anaesthesia and Pain Therapy. Van Zundert was appointed Officer in the Order of Orange-Nassau by Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands in 2012 and Knight Commander in the Order of Leopold II by King Albert II of Belgium the same year. In 2023, he was awarded the Leonard Travers Professorship by the Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists (ANZCA). In 2024, he received the ANZCA Medal and the ANZCA Australasian Award. In the same year he also received the Australian Medical Association’s Excellence in Healthcare Award and was named Commander in the Order of the Royal Crown by King Philippe of Belgium. In 2026, he received the ANZCA Robin Smallwood Bequest Award.
He became a Fellow of the Royal College of Anaesthetists (2004), a Fellow of the Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists (2012), a Fellow of the American Society of Regional Anesthesia and Pain Medicine (2023), and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine (2025).