Duncan Steele - HRUK SCTS Trainee Fellowship in Adult and Paediatric Cardiac Surgery, £25,000 awarded
Duncan plans to make his SCTS-HRUK fellowship at the Waikato Cardiothoracic Centre in New Zealand the perfect bridge to a consultancy in the NHS. The rota design, patient cohort and excellent support from colleagues means his development will be rapid and profound. For the duration of the year based at Waikato, he expects to carry out a wide array of adult cardiac procedures, likely well over 150 in the 12 months. He aims to build further operative competence but also peri-operative management. On top of this, he will be carrying out several emergency dissection repairs and gain more experience in leading patient care.
Joseph George - HRUK SCTS Trainee Fellowship in Adult and Paediatric Cardiac Surgery, £25,000 awarded
Joseph has secured a position as a senior clinical fellow in congenital cardiac surgery at the Hospital for Sick Kids, Toronto, one of the largest programmes in North America. He will have full involvement in the heart and lung transplant service and mechanical support in both children and adults. This builds on his experience from GOSH. He will be able to gain experience in minimally invasive congenital cardiac surgery and hybrid operating. With this opportunity, Joseph hopes to bring back essential skills to advance the services in the UK.
Georgia Layton - HRUK SCTS Academic Research Fellowship, £10,000 awarded
Georgia aims to answer a number of questions during her fellowship, among which the most important: Are there differences in case mix, surgical priority, incidence of mortality and complications (both in-hospital and in the long-term) after adult cardiac surgery during pre-lockdown and lockdown periods? With her research colleagues at Glenfield Hospital, under the supervision of Mr Mustafa Zakkar, Georgia will conduct a prospective time series analysis among patients undergoing adult cardiac surgery from April 2015 until present. She will investigate the change in the case mix, surgical priority over time and compare this between pre lockdown and post lockdown periods.
Nicholas Chilvers - HRUK SCTS Academic Research Fellowship, £10,000 awarded
Nicholas will be undertaking his fellowship at The Freeman Hospital, Newcastle upon Tyne, under the supervision of Prof John Dark. He describes the fellowship objectives as being 3 fold. Firstly, to achieve Objective 1/Phase 1 of the project (Isolation and Characterisation of human amniotic epithelial cells (hAEC) and hAEC-EVs) and begin Objective 2 (Compare LV systolic and diastolic function of human hearts treated with two doses of hAEC-EVs vs. untreated controls). Secondly, to obtain pilot data to support his applications for a further 2-year clinical research fellowship. This project is expected to demonstrate that hAEC-EV treatment can safely preserve cardiac function in extended-criteria human donor hearts and reveal the protective mechanisms, particularly regarding IRI.
Nicole Asemota - HRUK SCTS Academic Research Fellowship, £6,211,90 awarded
Nicole’s current PhD is focused on establishing new, improved markers of heart transplantability, to improve organ assessment and support DCD cardiac transplantation. Initial pilot work for this larger project is required, and she aims perform this pilot work on human samples, supported by the SCTS-HRUK Academic Fellowship, under the supervision of Mr Stephen Large. During cardiac DCD donations, she will sample arterial and venous perfusate samples, at 3 different time points to replicate the average reperfusion time for a DCD heart prior to transplantation in her institution, Royal Papworth Hospital, where the fellowship will be undertaken.
Ujjawal Kumar - HRUK SCTS Medical Student Travelling Fellowship, £500 awarded
Ujjawal will be undertaking his fellowship at the Cleveland Clinic in the USA for 4 weeks. He aims to gain exposure to novel and innovative techniques in cardiothoracic surgery that are being used at the Cleveland Clinic, such as minimally invasive surgeries and robotic-assisted surgery, fields that both, in his view, show great promise and have potential future roles in the UK for cardiothoracic surgery. Moreover, he is interested to spend time and learn about the integration of surgical and interventional cardiology teams to deliver the best care possible for patients using transcatheter approaches.
Bobby Chow - HRUK SCTS Medical Student Travelling Fellowship, £288.10 awarded
Apart from further honing his surgical skills, Bobby would also like to look at other aspects in cardiac surgery during his 4-weel SCTS-HRUK Fellowship at Wythenshawe Hospital. Currently he is a final year medical student on anaesthetics rotation and has developed an increasing appreciation that the success of the operation depends on a team of people. As a part of the posting at Wythenshawe Hospital, under the supervision of James Barnard, Bobby would like to carry out a quality improvement project looking at optimising patients’ preoperative haemoglobin levels, reducing blood loss and reducing blood transfusion requirements in the early postoperative period.
Alex Poovathoor - HRUK SCTS Medical Student Travelling Fellowship, £500 awarded
Alex aims to build on, consolidate and enhance his appreciation of the palliative surgery for the congenital heart diseases affecting children worldwide by undertaking a 7-week fellowship at the CHUV in Switzerland, under the direct mentorship of Mr Hosseinpour. He is keen to not just explore the corrective surgery but the entire patient journey, alongside developing partnerships with other international units, paving the way for collaborative clinical and research work in the future.
Javeria Tariq - HRUK SCTS Medical Student Travelling Fellowship, £500 awarded
Javeria will be undertaking a 4-week Observership Programme at the Department of Cardiology of Aswan Heart Centre. Her aim is to observe how a CTS department is run in an entirely different landscape to her own institution. From patient medical management the peri-operative period and how the multi-disciplinary team work together to seeing how resources are allocated to understand how Aswan offers world renowned care amidst the pressures of serving a large population and the increasing global challenge of health care delivery, with particular interest for congenital procedures.
William Crawford - HRUK SCTS Patient Education and Awareness Project, £1,000 awarded
William plans to carry out his Fellowship project at St Bartholomew’s Hospital over a 12 month period, under the supervision of Dr Selina Ho. His project, supported by the SCTS-HRUK fellowship, aims to improve the diabetic control of pre-operative elective patients, resulting in the screening of approximately 250 patients. This initiative has numerous long-term benefits, seeking to result in a holistic improvement in patients general health, reducing common diabetic complications such as retinopathy, peripheral vascular disease, peripheral neuropathy and chronic kidney disease.