Clare Fowler

Prof Clare Fowler CBE is a British physician and academic who created the subspecialty of uro-neurology, a medical field that combines urology and neurology.

With colleagues, she disproved that these women's symptoms were primarily psychological or hysterical and showed that a significant proportion of them could be treated using a type of electrical stimulation therapy, sacral neuromodulation.

She assisted with establishing botox detrusor injections as a treatment for people with overactive bladders who did not improve with usual medications.

Clare Fowler was educated at Wycombe Abbey school, Buckinghamshire, while her parents worked in Bolivia, where her father was a tin ore smelter.

[3] By measuring electromyographical signals from the urethral sphincter in these women, they demonstrated that some had a neurophysiological disorder and showed that sacral neuromodulation, a type of electrical stimulation therapy was effective in a significant proportion of them.

[2] Following the advice of Roger William Gilliatt she completed her masters in neurophysiology from University College London, where she also studied laboratory computing and worked with the LINC-8.

[1] In 1987 she established the Department of Uro-Neurology at The National, and with several research fellows, led trials looking at treatments for urinary retention in women, and sildenafil in men with multiple sclerosis and sexual dysfunction.

[1] With her former research fellow Prokar Dasgupta, they were first in the UK to use Botox injections, using a flexible cystoscope, as a treatment for people with overactive bladders who did not improve with usual medications.