Associate Professor Stuart Kostalas

Professor Stuart Kostalas is a specialist gastroenterologist and interventional endoscopist based in Port Macquarie, NSW, and a Conjoint Professor of Medicine at UNSW. He practises at Port Macquarie Gastroenterology and Endoscopy and serves as Director of Endoscopy and Chair of the Medical Advisory Committee at Port Macquarie Private Hospital, where he has built the clinical governance framework for endoscopy and established benchmarks for sessile serrated lesion (SSL) detection rates.

He is completing a DPhil from the University of Oxford, where his doctoral research examined the epidemiology, detection, and surveillance of colonic serrated lesions, including the anatomical distribution of SSLs, benchmarking detection rates, acetic acid chromoendoscopy to improve lesion detection, and polyp burden and surveillance intervals in serrated polyposis syndrome. He also holds an Oxford MSc in Evidence-Based Health Care (Medical Statistics), a Master of Medicine in Clinical Epidemiology (University of Sydney), and a Master of Biostatistics (University of Queensland). He is an accredited Graduate Statistician and a Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians.

Professor Kostalas leads the Port Macquarie Gastroenterology Research Group, whose research program spans serrated lesion epidemiology, detection, and surveillance; serrated polyposis syndrome; endoscopic submucosal dissection (ESD); anal high-grade squamous intraepithelial lesions; coeliac disease; fatigue in inflammatory bowel disease; and microscopic colitis. Current work includes ACID-SSL, a randomised controlled trial of chromoendoscopy for SSL detection. He has presented widely on SSL detection and serrated polyposis, including at Digestive Disease Week 2026. He convenes the annual Port Macquarie ESD Masterclass, which has brought international expert faculty, including Professors Takashi Toyonaga, Noriya Uedo, and Hiromitsu Ban, to regional NSW and helped establish Port Macquarie as a recognised ESD centre. He sits on ANZELF and the Gastroenterological Society of Australia's Regional, Remote and Indigenous group. He teaches medical students extensively, including biostatistics and clinical reasoning, and has developed online interactive workshops to support this.