Philip Poole-Wilson

Philip Alexander Poole-Wilson FRCP, FESC, FACC, FMedSci (26 April 1943 – 4 March 2009) was a British academic cardiologist of international reputation who had particular interest in the management of heart failure.

At the University of Cambridge, Poole-Wilson was a major scholar, initially studying maths and physics before switched to natural sciences and then to medicine.

There he learnt to measure the movement of K, Na and Ca ions in the isolated, but arterially perfused, interventricular preparation which could be made truly ischaemic.

At the same time his clinical work with George Sutton[3] at Hillingdon Hospital led to them writing a letter to the BMJ highlighting a concern with the prevalence of heart failure in the community.

Philip Poole-Wilson succeeded in bringing these two areas - the pathophysiology and the clinical predicament - together, eventually leading an academic department that bridged the interface of those disciplines.

[6] More prosaic perhaps, but important to day-to-day practice, Poole-Wilson played a part in introducing the six-minute walk test as an easy way of assessing exercise capacity in patients with heart failure.

The advent of reliable, untethered, left ventricular assist devices (LVADs), a form of artificial heart, interested him greatly and together with Stephen Westaby at Oxford he assessed a number of patients who subsequently received the Jarvic axial impellor pump as a life-time treatment.

He sat on many committees within the UK including the Department of Health, the Medical Research Council, the British Heart Foundation and the Royal College of Physicians.

[22] As a result of blending basic science with clinical medicine and being politically active one of Poole-Wilson's major accomplishments was the organization of international cardiology.

He began his career when cardiology in most European countries was dominated by national societies in which basic science and clinical medicine were almost entirely separate areas of study.

As a result, information was generally exchanged among small groups of scientists and physicians who had trained together, spoke a single language, and shared a limited viewpoint.

This research collaboration he organised, between the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, and the Royal Brompton Hospital and Imperial College, continues to flourish, and aims to improve public health using varied strategies for the diagnosis and management of Heart Failure.