Background

He was appointed Consultant Cardiologist in 2002, at Hammersmith Hospital, London and Buckinghamshire Hospitals NHS Trust. He was the Clinical Director for Medicine at Stoke Mandeville and the Clinical Lead for Cardiology.

He has been the Clinical Lead for Heart Failure for over 10 years and in this time has developed and mentored many specialist heart failure nurses who work in the community to care for patients with heart failure.

Training

He graduated with a 1st Class degree (MA) from Downing College, Cambridge. He completed clinical medical training (BMBCh) at Magdalen College, Oxford. He is the recipient of multiple university prizes from Cambridge and Oxford Universities. After graduation he worked as a House Officer in the University Department of General Surgery at Glasgow Royal Infirmary before returning to his alma mater to work in the Nuffield Department of Medicine at Oxford.

For his post-gradtuate training in General Medicine (MRCP), he moved to London working in Haematology and the Bone Marrow Transplant Unit at Hammersmith Hospital, the Royal Brompton and National Heart Hospital, the Intensive Care Unit and Lane Fox Unit at St Thomas’s Hospital and finally at the National Hospital for Neurological Diseases at Queen Square in London. Before undertaking his cardiology training at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School (RPMS) at Hammersmith Hospital, and affiliated hospitals in London, he co-wrote and published the Oxford Handbook of Acute Medicine.

He was awarded a Medical Research Council (MRC) Fellowship for his research at Imperial College, London.

Clinical interests and areas of expertise

• Hypertension and its modern management – ambulatory blood pressure monitoring, tailored therapy and investigation for underlying causes of high blood pressure
• Coronary artery disease – noninvasive investigations (Exercise ECG, stress ECHO) and cardiac catheterisation
• Interventional cardiology – coronary angioplasty, stents, ASD closure and other transcatheter device therapies
• Heart failure – modern management with tailored therapy not only for symptoms but also to address underlying causes of the heart failure; pacemaker therapy and resynchronisation therapy
• Valvular heart disease – diagnosis of heart murmurs by echocardiography, monitoring and long term management
• Arrhythmias (palpitations and syncope) – investigation for palpitations and blackouts, ambulatory ECG monitoring, and management including implantation of pacemakers
• Disease prevention and management clinics – directed at follow-up and secondary prevention for patients at high risk for cardiovascular disease

Research interests

His research interests include methodologies to promote cardiac health. He was one of the main UK contributors to the European Study, EUROACTION, a European Society of Cardiology demonstration project in preventive cardiology. He has an interest in biomarkers for cardiovascular disease and has identified a blood test for a novel biomarker of severe coronary artery disease which may be more sensitive than conventional tests.

Research interests:

• Biomarkers in cardiovascular disease
• Cardiac rehabilitation and cardiovascular health optimisation
• Endothelial adhesion molecules in xenotransplantation
• Nitric oxide synthase in vascular biology
• Cellular interactions in transplantation biology