Mr Stephen Large

I have been drawn into heart failure which is so often due to ischaemia so these two issues are of particular interest to me. Therefore heart transplantation is of interest and its main clinical barrier is availability of good donor hearts.

We have established a programme of heart transplantation with donation after circulatory determined death (essentially using an ischaemic heart). Areas of special interest include myocardial ischaemia, myocardial protection, measurement of ventricular function and ways to perfuse/store human hearts for later transplantation.

I also have an interest in thoracic aortic disease and am the CI of ETTAA, an HTA-funded observational trial of patients with aneurysmal enlargement of intra-thoracic aortas. This large study finishes recruitment in July 2018 and will report in the following 12 months.

Quality of life is a missed end-point for clinical cardiac surgery. This we are to pursue through at a national level with the intention to demonstrate the impact of heart surgery on quality of life for the patient and to establish a pre-operative calculator that can predict the likelihood of improvement in the quality of life of patients so helping them with informed consent.