IN MEMORIAM: DR PHILIP POOLE WILSON
Dr Philip Poole-Wilson, a world-renowned cardiologist who modernised research into heart failure, sadly died on 4 March 2009. The World Heart Federation is honoured to call him a Past President (2001–2002) and is indebted to the continuous leadership, support and knowledge that he provided to our organization. Professor Pekka Puska, current President, said “We are all deeply shocked and saddened by this news. Philip was President of the World Heart Federation from 2003–2004 and has always been a strong supporter of our organization on many fronts and a good and truly committed physician. He will be sorely missed”.
Dr Poole-Wilson was an expert on heart failure and coronary heart disease prevention across the globe and an ardent advocate of global knowledge-sharing as an essential component of cardiovascular disease prevention. He recently wrote in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology: “In the last 25 years, the world has become smaller for the cardiovascular physician in the sense that scientists and medical specialists have been able to communicate in a manner that was previously unknown. There are two key reasons. The first is the airplane, which has allowed physicians from all over the world to travel to clinical and scientific meetings, to mix more frequently with colleagues from many countries, and thus to establish new friendships and collaborations. The second, more recent reason, is the development of the Internet. A consequence is that physicians, patients, health workers, and politicians have access to an immense, and hitherto unthinkable, range of knowledge. All can exchange opinions more quickly than ever before....The countries of Europe and the world do, to a large extent, represent a laboratory in which different health systems have been tested and in which different approaches have been taken to the delivery of health services and to the funding of clinical research. There is much to be learned by studying the merits or otherwise of these differences.”
He was born in London in 1943 and his early research interests were based on the movement of chemicals across cell membranes. He then moved into the biochemical bases for heart-muscle contraction. It was this research which led him into clinical cardiology. He won a British American Travelling Research Fellowship in 1973 with which he went to UCLA in California. Dr Poole-Wilson’s research at UCLA involved potassium and acid movements in heart muscle. This formed the basis for the work he continued on his return to the UK for a year at St Thomas’. Then, in 1976, he was appointed senior lecturer at the Cardiothoracic Institute and honorary consultant physician at the National Heart Hospital. In 1980 he was made reader and in 1982 given a chair by London University and in 1988 he became the Simon Marks and British Heart Foundation Professor of Cardiology at the National Heart and Lung Institute, at Imperial College.
Dr Poole-Wilson held five visiting professorships, gave 39 named lectures, was an honorary member of 13 overseas societies of cardiology, and supervised 48 MD and PhD students (29 of whom went on to hold professorships). He served on the boards of 31 journals and was a chair or member of the steering committee or monitoring board of 26 major drug trials. He was the author or co-author of 538 publications and edited, or contributed to, more than 100 books.
He was Head of Cardiac Medicine at the Royal Brompton, National Heart and Lung Hospital (1988) and at the National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College London (1997). He was President of the European Society of Cardiology (1994–1996) and President of the World Heart Federation (2003–2004) and the founding chair of the British Society for Heart Failure.
He received many honours, including the gold medal of the European Cardiac Society (1996); the Prix Europe et Médicine from L'Institut des Sciences de la Santé, Paris (2001); and the Mackenzie Medal of the British Cardiovascular Society (2007).
At his retirement dinner, which was held at the Royal College of Physicians in the autumn of 2008, Dr Poole-Wilson suggested that he had never worked a day in his life. “Cardiology has been my hobby,” he said. Although he retired from clinical practice at the age of 65, he intended to keep up his hobby in the UK and abroad as Emeritus Professor of Cardiology at Imperial College.
The day before his death, Circulation, the Journal of the American Heart Association, published an article entitled “Pioneer in Cardiology: Philip Poole-Wilson” and they have provided free access to it at: http://circ.ahajournals.org/cgi/reprint/119/8/f43
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