About Me

Introduction

Dr. Duncan Dymond was educated at St. Paul’s School, London where he won a Senior Foundation Scholarship. At Colet Court, the preparatory school, he was the first winner of the Sir Colin Pearson (later Lord Pearson) Public Speaking Prize.

Education

His medical education was at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital Medical School, where he won the David Weizman Memorial Prize in Cardiology in his final year, as well as being Proxime Accessit (runner up for those delinquent in Latin!) in the Brackenbury Medicine Prize. He graduated in 1972.

After his pre-registration house jobs and a further year of general medicine, he obtained the MRCP at his first attempt in 1974, motivated by the imminent rise in the entrance fee for that exam! He then embarked upon his Cardiology training as a recipient of an Aylwen Bursary in the Department of Cardiology at Bart’s hospital. He trained in non-invasive and invasive Cardiology, and began to research into the use of radioisotopes as diagnostic tools in coronary artery disease, and published extensively in this field. He presented his work at national and international meetings. He was awarded the degree of MD (Doctor of Medicine) for his thesis in the University of London in 1980. He has more than 100 scientific articles to his name.

In March 1980 he took up a position at the University of Wisconsin-Mount Sinai Medical Centre as Director of Nuclear Cardiology and Assistant Professor of Medicine. He continued to broaden his experience and continued working with radioisotopes, and publishing in United States journals. At this time he also started to learn the technique of coronary angioplasty (balloon treatment) that was just taking off.

Having found the American Medical system thoroughly disagreeable (although perhaps he wishes he had not), he returned to the United Kingdom in late 1981, again at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, where he introduced angioplasty. He founded the British Nuclear Cardiology Group (BNCG), which now flourishes as an affiliated group to the British Cardiac Society. He was elected a Fellow of the American College of Cardiology.

At this time, he developed an interest in the use of ultra short half-life radioactive gold for heart studies, and carried out the first human studies in the world in 1982-1983. He presented the results at a meeting organised by the Food and Drugs Administration in Washington DC in 1983.

In 1987 he was appointed Consultant Cardiologist at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, a post he currently occupies. Since his appointment he has served on the Scientific Committee of the European Society of Cardiology and was elected a Founder Fellow of that Society. He has also served as a member of Council of the British Cardiovascular Intervention Society (concerned with angioplasty and related technology) and was elected Honorary Secretary of the British Cardiac Society, serving from 1990 to 1994. In this role he was also a member of the Cardiology Committee of the Royal College of Physicians, and was elected to the full Fellowship of that College in 1991.

Current Clinical Practice

Currently Dr Duncan Dymond is actively involved in most aspects of adult cardiology. He sees patients with chest pains, shortness of breath, dizziness and collapse, palpitations etc. He has maintained his expertise in the use and interpretation of radio-isotope imaging techniques in both diagnosing coronary artery disease and in the assessment of its prognosis. He is also widely experienced in the use of EBCT calcium scanning to assess future risk, and has an interest in the developing techniques of CT angiography and magnetic resonance imaging fo the heart.

As far as procedures are concerned, his major expertise is in the field of percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) which involves the use of stents to open blocked or narrowed arteries. Dr Dncan Dymond has been in this field since 1980 and in fact was among the first to use balloon technology in the UK. He specialises in complex cases such as multivessel disease, chronically blocked arteries, and narrowings in bypass grafts as a few examples.He performs these regularly in the NHS at St. Bartholomew's Hospital and privately at the Wellington hospital. His results, success and complication rates are produced each year as part of the NHS appraisal process.

He continues to lecture both in the UK and abroad, and is lead clinician for Audit and Clinical Standards at the Wellington Hospital, and co-chairman of the Clinical Governance board.

Teaching

Since his appointment he has supervised the completion of 3 MD Doctorates by his research registrars, and continued to lecture at home and abroad. He has also continued to publish widely in peer-reviewed journals and has contributed numerous invited articles and editorials.

He has throughout his career developed a skill in teaching, not only to medical under-graduates and post-graduates, but also to nurses, technicians, and to a wider audience of non-medical workers, especially those involved in life underwriting, to whom he is a speaker much in demand.

Media

From 1992 onwards he has achieved a more public profile, as one of the principal spokesmen in the ‘Save Barts Campaign’, which has resulted from the decisions based on the Tomlinson Report. As a result of this he has appeared on many television and radio programmes (see attached media experience). He had articles published in The Guardian and The Observer and was once mentioned by name in an editorial in the London Evening Standard. In October 1999 he was invited to contribute a centrepiece article to the New Statesman on the ‘imperfections’ of the BMA!

Based on this profile, he appeared at very short notice on National News to speak on heart attacks when Mr. Michael Heseltine was taken ill. He contributes and writes articles regularly for the Daily Mail, amongst the most recent have been about Princess Margaret’s Health, and in about the dangers of over-exercising. He was pursued relentlessly by the Media to comment on Tony Blair’s heart palpitations, doing approximately 15 interviews in one day. In November 2003 he featured in the Daily Mail’s articles on women and heart disease, and on the proposals to sell cholesterol lowering medications over the counter at pharmacies. In 2004 he was once again placed under siege by TV cameras and microphones to explain the heart procedure that Tony Blair underwent.

In 2005 he has appeared on Breakfast TV, Channel 5’s Doctor Doctor, and been the focus of one programme in the BBC2 series ‘The Private Life of Harley Street’

In 1993-1994 he was invited by Parthenon Publications to write the ‘Atlas of Myocardial Infarction’, one of the visual encylopaedias, and this was published in 1994.

In 1996, he did a one-day television presenter’s course organised at the studios of Meridian TV by Pozitiv Productions. A show reel is available.

Duncan Dymond has made the skill and art of communication one of his major interests, particularly in the field of educating patients to understand more about their illnesses and treatments. As part of this, he published ‘The Jargon-Buster’s Guide to Heart Disease’ (Metro Books) in May 1996.

This book, aimed at the non-medical public, has attracted much media interest and the author has appeared on several radio broadcasts, including ‘Outlook’ on the BBC World Service, Radio 5 Live, Jane Markham’s News Programme on Classic FM, and ‘The Jamesons’ on Radio 2!

The updated version ‘The Plain English Guide to Hear Disease’ has been published in 2003 (Blake publishing).

He has also contributed to a mini-series on ‘Survivors’ for ‘Medicine Now’ on Radio 4, and done live phone-ins on BBC regional radio in Oxford, Lancashire and Cleveland, as well as London radio.

He advised Wall-to-Wall television on a programme on heart attacks (Body Story - Channel 4 November 1998), and has participated twice in ‘Trust Me I am a Doctor’ for BBC2.

He has also written several articles for the non-medical public, which have appeared in magazines such as ‘Active Life’, ‘Men’s Health’, ‘Yours’, ‘Choice’, and both ‘Woman’ and ‘Woman’s Own’ as well as ‘Jewish Chronicle’.

Duncan Dymond is the senior author on a cardiology text book for undergraduates, and was also Editor of a distance learning publication for Cardiologists to help Continuing Medical Education (CME), as well as writing new material for the non-medical public. He also remains an active practitioner in the field of angioplasty and stenting for coronary disease, and visited Northern Cyprus in 1996, at the invitation of the President.

Since his youth he has been a passionate supporter of Chelsea Football Club, a pastime that often raises his heart rate to totally unacceptable levels. One of his most recent TV appearances was on the sports section of Sky News talking about the increased incidence of heart attacks during penalty shoot-outs! The pinnacle of his writing career to date has been an article in the Chelsea matchday programmes on this topic, and this has been followed by a recent article on football managers and heart disease (a guaranteed 35000 readership!!). He has EVEN made 2 guest appearances on Chelsea TV!! However, he has not forgiven his Siamese cat Zicchi for upstaging him in a photograph that accompanied an article for Capital Doctor. The cat did not however make it on the middle pages of the Observer for the article he wrote on stress and the heart when Alex Ferguson had his cardiac troubles!

Duncan is now the official Cardiologist for Chelsea FC although until recently it has been the supporters who have needed his tender ministrations rather than the players!

He plays tennis with a knife between his teeth, and is renowned by his opponents as a chaser of lost causes and once in a pro-am tournament served an Ace at Ilie Nastase! He loves skiing and playing the piano. He also writes poetry, sometimes between (or even during) operations!

The book ‘How to Cope Successfully with High Blood Pressure’, commissioned by Wellhouse Publishing has been published in September 2003. This work is for the non-medical public and explains the dangers and treatment of this common condition. Although it hardly makes the pulse race, that can only be a good thing for the patients who need to read it!

Duncan Dymond is now working on a new book in his spare time (ha-ha!). The book is a travelogue through a day in the life of an oppressed NHS Consultant, an antidote to the endless soap-operas such as Casualty and ER, which bear as much relation to the reality of hospital life as the film ‘The Thief of Baghdad’ does to real life in Iraq.

September 2005