[wpseo_breadcrumb]
He is Professor of Clinical Cardiology and Consultant Cardiologist at Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospitals where he was Head of Non-invasive Cardiology from 1991 until 2017. His specialist interests are cardiac imaging and heart valve disease.
Cardiac imaging
He founded the echocardiography department at Guy’s Hospital and developed this further after merger with STH in 1997. He was involved with setting up national accreditation programmes for transthoracic and transoesophageal echocardiography and for setting up departmental accreditation a process subsequently extended to Europe. He was chief examiner for the British Society of Echocardiographs from1995 – 8, chair of the British Society of Echocardiography Education Committee 1996-8 to and President 2003-2005. He designed a generic basic echocardiography certification relevant to cardiology, intensive care, emergency medicine, and general medicine. This has now been developed into a successful training course (FAME) run with Dr RR.
Whilst President of the British Society of Echocardiography he established minimum standards for echocardiography and negotiated for accreditation to be recognised by the Healthcare Commission. He engaged with the D o H on workforce planning, professional registration and the role of GP and practitioners with a special interest in echocardiography.
He has chaired national working groups on standards in open access and community echo for heart failure. He has written a book on echocardiography for general practitioners and guidance documents on open access echocardiography and community echocardiography for heart failure.
As a member of the advisory committee on cardiology to the RCP he helped produce the national syllabus for registrars. He was also a member of national committees producing workforce documents to guide national policy. He founded and ran the London Echocardiography Course to teach the national echocardiography syllabus for 10 years until 2008 and is on the faculty for many national and international echocardiography courses. He is on the international panel for an AI company Alerte.
Valve disease
He developed an interest in valve disease with research for his MD thesis on the early detection of prosthetic valve dysfunction. He then founded the Heart Valve Group performing randomised studies of designs of replacement valve, core lab work and studies to determine the optimal timing of surgery for aortic stenosis. This work has contributed to international guidelines and was recognised with a personal chair in 2009.
He was editor of the Journal of Heart Valve Disease for many years and is still a member of its editorial board. He was a founder member and the first President of the British Heart Valve Society from 2010-2013. He chairs a working group producing international recommendations for improving the clinical care of patients with valve disease. He wrote the first national syllabus for valve disease and has edited an E-learning package and set-up the first training day for valve disease.
He set up a specialist multidisciplinary valve clinic which is a national model frequently visited by other hospitals.
He was on the International panel for the Canadian guidelines on valve disease and the combined European/US documents on assessing artificial heart valves and valve stenosis.
He is an invited expert on the International Standards Organisation (ISO) panel producing standards for testing heart valve replacements including TAVI. A new set of standards (ISO-5840-1/2/3 is in progress). He is also a member of the British Standards Institute (BSI) committee on heart valves. He has been an expert witness at the FDA panel to grant a licence to the Carbomedics valve. He has consulted for St Jude Medical, Edwards Lifesciences, Medtronic, Carbomedics, MCRI and Cryolife.
Other work including research
He has a long-standing interest in non-cardiac chest pain. He set up a biopsychosocial multidisciplinary non-cardiac chest pain clinic with Dr Liz Marks and Prof Myra Hunter which had major success in reducing pain, distress and use of healthcare resources. He has recently completed research in migraine and is involved with a large project treating depression associated with coronary disease in collaboration with Professor Andre Tylee. He is addressing the effect of aortic physiology on valve function with Dr Divaka Perera and Prof Chowiencysk (Clinical Pharmacology).
He has investigated cardiac physiology during pregnancy in collaboration with Dr Nick Kametas and Prof Kypros Nicolaides and has links with major national and international trials including SEARCH, Heart Protection Study, SEAS (steering committee) and Thrive.
National work
Standards The group has been at the forefront of setting standards in valve disease and imaging. JC has chaired working group producing national recommendations for improving the detection of valve disease, organising valve clinics and running specialist valve services in hospitals particularly for endocarditis. The group has been involved with BSE from its inception and JC helped set up the original TTE accreditation system and helped to write the TOE and departmental accreditation documents.
Administrative
JC British Cardiac Society: Council 2003-5 and 2012-3, Standards committee 2003-5, Workforce committee 2003-6, Programme committee
Add Form
2003-5, Working group on imaging 2005-6
JC Royal College: SAC in cardiology 2006-09, JCHPBT SAC committee on specialist cardiac training (2003-7), External assessor for GIM PYA (2007)
JC Government and administration: Lead clinician for regional cardiology audit 1998-2000, GPwSI committee, D o H workforce committee, CHD collaborative on GPwSI and PwSI, CoR UKAS committee, Chair of SE London working group on echocardiography, Member of the British Standards Institute (BSI) committee on heart valves (1991-current), NHSE aortic stenosis pathway committee (2019-), .
Standards
JC co-authored 38 national or international standards notably the ESC and ASE guidelines on imaging replacement heart valves and the ESC guidance on aortic stenosis and UK and European standard for heart valve centres. He was on the International panel for the Canadian guidelines on valve disease and the combined European/US documents on assessing artificial heart valves, valve stenosis and appropriateness criteria for echo in valve disease.
He is an invited expert on the International Standards Organisation (ISO) panel producing standards for testing heart valve replacements including TAVI. A new set of standards (ISO-5840-1/2/3 is in progress). He has been an expert witness at the FDA panel to grant a licence to the Carbomedics valve.
Industry He has consulted for St Jude Medical, Edwards Lifesciences, Medtronics, Carbomedics, MCRI and Cryolife. He is on the international advisory board for Alerte a company exploring the use of AI in echocardiographic big data.
Editorial (JC)
- Editorial board of the Journal of Heart Valve Disease 1994-.
- Editor of the Journal of Heart Valve Disease 1995-2004.
- Editorial board of the International Journal of Clinical Practice 1991-.
- Editorial board British Journal of Cardiology
- Associate editor Echo Research and Practice 2015-
- International Advisory Board for Heart 2016-
