Training in valve disease

Guidance from echocardiography clinical lead at Barts, Dr. Guy Lloyd. Training in valve stress by observation at Eastbourne District Hospital for observation in the summer of 2015 and from thereon by Dr. Guy Lloyd (hands-on).

Specialist valve activity

Since September 2021 when I moved to the Cleveland Clinic I have continued to run a physiologist-led clinic one day a week at Barts.  Between November 2015 and  September 2021, I was lead for physiologist valve clinic services at Bart’s Health NHS Trust seeing 2 new and 5 follow-up cases per clinic.  At the trust 365 specialist valve echocardiograms are performed each year of which I do 150.
Since September 2021 I have trained 5 more echo physiologists to open physiologist-led valve clinics in district Hospitals.

Patients seen
Moderate and severe native valve disease, post-endocarditis and post surgery and TAVI

Process
We run the physiologist-led and physician led valve clinics at the same day and time. If there are urgent concerns the physiologist always have access to the physicians for them to review the patient. For non-urgent concerns, we discuss the case at the end of the day and decide on the next step for the patient

CPD
Attendance at annual BHVS and European Society of Cardiology cardiovascular imaging meetings in the last 5 years

Research

  1. PiCardia LEAFLEX (2017)  
  2. Exercise Limitation in patients with mitral stenosis: a CPET echo study (2018)
  3. The additional value of CPET over conventional treadmill testing in patients with moderate to severe aortic stenosis (2018) 


Publications
Mitral Stenosis in 2019: Changing approaches for changing times (co-author)
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14779072.2019.1632190

*My previous name was Karen Armado

Valve Societies
British Heart Valve Society

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