About the Valve Research Group

Our group was founded in 1995 initially as a research clinic to understand more about the origin of symptoms in patients with heart valve disease. It rapid expanded over the next few years to become an organisation interested in evaluating the durability and performance of prosthetic heart valves and develop new techniques for symptom assessment.

In recent years the size of the group has grown substantially to include interventional structural interventional cardiologists, consultant imaging cardiologists, cardiac surgeons, bioengineers, computational modelers, specialist heart valve nurses, highly specialist physiologists and a spectrum of PhD students. We now have translational research interests than span the breadth of heart valve disease.

The department is strong in cardiac imaging with specialists in all relevant fields, echocardiography, magnetic resonance, computerised tomography and nuclear medicine. This has allowed an expansion in training opportunities for registrars and external national and international fellows.

The echocardiography staff have formal British Society of Echocardiography, European or equivalent US or Australian accreditation. The Department is British Society of Echocardiography accredited and was recently reaccredited. Quality control is embedded within our processes. All studies performed by trainee registrars or sonographers are checked by a senior sonographer.