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Research Partnership Buoyed by Canon Medical UK Investment
Knowledge of how the heart adapts to exercise and disease to be expanded by investment in research scholars and cardiac investigation techniques
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The aim of the Sports Cardiology &Research Partnership, a team of leading UK academics and medical institutions, is to advance the detection of serious cardiac disease. Anew round of investment announced by Canon Medical Systems UK to appoint additional research scholars and expand echocardiographyultrasound and cardiac MRI investigation techniques will push its quest forward. In the last year, the research team, comprising of experts from the University of Bristol, Bristol Heart Institute, the Children’s Health & Exercise Research Centre/University of Exeter (CHERC), and the Institute ofSport, Exercise and Health (ISEH) at University College London (UCL), has shaped international discussion on cardiac adaption in paediatric athletes,and exercise recommendations in children and
Patient set-up for cardiopulmonary exercise testing in combination with an echocardiogram. adults with congenital heart disease. This has been through the publication of scienti c papers1, guidelines and participation in globalconferences.
New studies are ongoing to quantitively assess the cardiac function during exercise of highly trained sports stars of the future. With Canon Medical UK’s support, the Sports Cardiology & Research Partnership has been able to generate one of the world’s largest datasets on the cardiovascular pro le of young football players from the world’s leading football clubs and academies. Early data was presented to the 2021 International Olympic Committee World Conference on Prevention of Injury & Illness in Sport, while other research is currently under peer review with several leading journals.
“By understanding how the heart works in the highly trained athlete, we are able to apply these ndings to those with congenital heart disease, with the aim of being able to detect potentially serious adverse outcomes earlier and promoting a healthy lifestyle to those with underlying heart disease,” states Dr Nathan Riding, Senior Research Associate at the Institute of Sport, Exercise and Health and Canon Medical UK
(Left to right) Dr Lynsey Forsythe, Research Fellow; Nurul Amir, PhD Student; Tim Palarm, Regional Manager – Ultrasound Sales at Canon Medical Systems UK; Curtis Wadey, PhD Student; Dr Dan Dorobantu, PhD student & Cardiologist; and Professor Craig Williams, Director of CHERC.
funded scholar. “Congenital heart disease a ects approximately 1% of all live births but as surgeries are improved, and prognosis gets better, the number of children transitioning into adolescence and adulthood is increasing. By encouraging exercise adherence, our aim is to improve quality of life and life expectancy.”
Dr. Riding continues, “One hour of exercise per day is the recommended amount of activity time for a child without heart disease, yet just 23% of boys and 20% of girls aged 5 to 15 meet these targets. Children with congenital heart conditions are also failing to meet these activity guidelines, further impacted by a lack of formal exercise rehabilitation programmes which would be bene cial to them. At the opposite end of the spectrum, child athletes, especially those in sporting academies, may now be undertaking up to 16 hours per week of training, yet with unknown consequences on the heart. Our research is important for so many young people, from so many walks of life.”
Mark Hitchman, Managing Director of Canon Medical Systems UK states, “Unlocking knowledge from the body through research is essential to evolve our understanding of how to improve mainstream health and wellbeing. Our increased investment in sports cardiology will not only bene t the sporting community, but also wider healthcare. We will be able to ne-tune our diagnostic imaging applications and health IT for cardiology and reshape procedures and protocols that can help improve people’s long-term outcomes.”
To further the early identi cation of pre-existing cardiac conditions, the Sports Cardiology & Research Partnership and Canon Medical are also continuing the roll out of the world’s rst mobile cardiac laboratory. This is providing cardiovascular screening for athletes and sports people. In partnership with the
Institute of Sport, Exercise and Health at UCL, where the programme is led by Profs. Guido Pieles and Mathew Wilson, the mobile lab is able to look into heart health using the latest medical imaging and analysis tools to identify pre-existing cardiac conditions that may predispose an athlete to sudden cardiac death.
The Sports Cardiology & Research Partnership is led by Professor Guido Pieles, the team cardiologist for Manchester United, Prof Graham Stuart, a Football Association expert consultant cardiologist, and Prof Craig Williams, director of CHERC. The research centres at Bristol, Exeter and ISEH London are using state of the art echocardiographic equipment by Canon Medical Systems. //
References 1 Pieles, G.E., Gowing, L., Ryding, D., Perry, D.,
McNally, S.R., Stuart, A.G. and Williams, C.A., 2021. Characterisation of LV myocardial exercise function by 2-D strain deformation imaging in elite adolescent footballers. European Journal of
Applied Physiology, 121(1), pp.239-250. Sharma,
C., Dorobantu, D.M., Ryding, D., Perry, D., McNally,
S.R., Stuart, A.G., Williams, C.A. and Pieles, G.E., 2022. Investigating the Accuracy of Quantitative
Echocardiographic-Modi ed Task Force Criteria for
Arrhythmogenic Ventricular Cardiomyopathy in
Adolescent Male Elite Athletes. Pediatric Cardiology, 43(2), pp.457-464.
Introducing our Research Experts and Scholars
Professor Craig Williams Craig Williams is Professor of Paediatric Physiology and Health and is the Directorof the Children's Health and Exercise Research Centre (CHERC) based at the University of Exeter. CHERC is a world leading research centre for the studyyoungpeople's exercise, health, tness and activity and its international eminence in paediatric exercise science was recognised by the award of a Queen’s Anniversary Prize for Higher Education. The Prize, the rst to beawarded in the exercise and sport sciences was presented by HM The Queen. Professor Williams's department recently came top of the Research Excellence Framework timeshighereducation.com/news/ref-2021sport-and-exercise-sciences-leisure-andtourism. He has overthe last 25 yearsbeen a strong advocate for promoting physical activity and exercise programmes for
children and young people with chronic medical conditions and is keen to establish paediatric rehabilitation programmes within healthcare pathways.
Professor Guido Pieles Professor Guido Pieles is a Consultant Adult and Paediatric Sports and Congenital Cardiologist and an international expert in the care of elite and amateur athletes currently leading the sports cardiology department at Aspetar Sports Medicine Hospital Doha. He served as an expert at the English Football Association sports cardiology advisory group and is member
of the Association of European Pediatric and Congenital Cardiology (AEPC) Sports Cardiology working group, and Pediatric liaison o cer at the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) Sports cardiology Nucleus and hold honorary research positions at UCL and the University of Bristol. Prof Guido´s passion for research focuses on developing innovative imaging methods to monitor cardiac performance and improve cardiac care of elite athletes and increase the exercise and sports participation of children and adult with and without heart disease. He has attracted funding in this eld from leading research charities and councils such as British Heart Foundation, UK NIHR and UK MRC and leads an innovative research partnership programme with Canon Medical UK to innovate imaging of the heart.
Dr Nathan Riding Nathan is currently a senior research associate at the University of Bristol, in collaboration with Canon Medical UK, and investigating cardiac function in exercise of paediatric children and athletes. His previous role was at Aspetar sports medicine hospital where his work focused on the cardiac screening of athletes. Here he has screened over 20,000 athletes and was a member of the International recommendations for ECG interpretation in athletes.
Dr Dan Dorobantu Dan is a cardiologist with an interest in cardiac diseases a ecting children, currently undergoing his PhD at the Universities of Exeter and Bristol, under the supervision of Prof. Craig Williams and Prof. Guido Pieles. His projects aims to improve the understanding of heart function adaptation to exercise in healthy children, young athletes and people with congenital heart disease, using state of the art cardiac imaging techniques such as speckle tracking imaging.
Curtis Wadey Curtis is a PhD student funded by the University of Exeter and Canon Medical UK and is based at the Children’s Health and Exercise Research Centre at the University of Exeter. Curtis researches the importance of and the best strategies to improve cardiorespiratory tness in paediatric and adult congenital heart disease populations.
Dr Lynsey Forsythe Lynsey is a cardiac physiologist and an accredited echocardiographer. She is currently working as a research associate in sport and exercise cardiology at Bristol Royal Hospital for Children. Lynsey is leading a Heart Research UK (HRUK) funded trial in physical activity and exercise intervention for young people with congenital heart disease alongside cardiologist Professor Graham Stuart and Professor Craig Williams, director of the children’s health and exercise research centre at Exeter University.
In 2018 Lynsey completed a PhD in Sports Cardiology at Liverpool John Moores University funded by Cardiac Risk in the Young (CRY). Through CRY and other healthcare providers Lynsey continues to deliver cardiac screening services to young people and elite athletes from a number of sports and organisations.
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Nurul Amir Nurul is a third-year PhD student at the University of Bristol. Her work currently focuses on physical activity levels and cardiac rehabilitation for children with congenital heart disease. She has also been a sports injury and rehabilitation lecturer at University Teknologi MARA, Malaysia for the past 5 years. Previously, Nurul worked as a Sports Therapist at the National Sports Institute of Malaysia where she designed, prescribed, and conducted a musculoskeletal rehabilitation training program for injured athletes and paralympic/disabled athletes of various sports.
Nuno Duarte Nuno is a senior cardiac physiologist with special expertise and interest in the cardiac assessment of athletes and patients with congenital heart disease. Nuno trained in Portugal, where he started his career as a Cardiac and Pulmonary Physiologist. In 2014, he moved to Jamaica where he helped to develop the rst Heart Institute of the Caribbean. Since his arrival to England in 2016 he has been actively working together with Prof Pieles at elite sports clubs, such as Manchester United FC, and with his research team in exercise related projects. He is currently the lead for echocardiography and stress echocardiography at the Bristol Royal Hospital for Children.
Dr Jack Gibb Jack is a paediatric cardiology trainee working at Bristol Royal Hospital for Children. He is interested in how exercise can modulate makers of cardiovascular disease in patients with inherited cardiac conditions, namely Marfan syndrome and bicuspid valve aortopathy.
Professor Graham Stuart Professor Graham Stuart is consultant cardiologist and electrophysiologist (congenital and inherited heart disease) at the Bristol Royal Hospital for Children and the Bristol Heart Institute. He is honorary associate professor in sports and exercise cardiology at the University of Bristol. Graham has a clinical and research interest in the e ect of exercise on the heart. He is on the Medical Advisory group of the Noonan Association and the Downs Heart group. He is Principle Investigator/ co-investigator of a number of research studies looking at exercise prescription, exercise physiology and various aspects of inherited cardiac conditions. Graham has been a cardiology advisor to the Rugby Football Union, Football Association and English Cricket Board. He is an enthusiastic (but rather slow) endurance athlete. In 2022 he rowed across the Atlantic in 41 days. He is a proud grandfather and looks forward to at least one of his grandchildren lifting the Rugby World Cup for Scotland in a few years time.
