Mr Nigel E Drury PhD FRCS(CTh)

• Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England 2015
• PhD in Medicine, University of Birmingham 2012
• Member of the Royal College of Surgeons of England 2004
• Bachelor of Medicine with Honours, University of Southampton 2000

Mr Drury graduated from the University of Southampton in 2000, was awarded his medical degree with Honours and won three undergraduate prizes including the Sutton Prize for Surgery. He completed Basic Surgical Training in Wessex and the South West before commencing his training in Cardiothoracic Surgery at Harefield Hospital, Middlesex and Papworth Hospital, Cambridge. He also gained experience in congenital heart disease at the Wessex Cardiac Centre in Southampton. He moved to Birmingham in 2007 to undertake his doctoral thesis in myocardial protection during cardiac surgery with Professor Domenico Pagano (Cardiac Surgery) and Professor Michael Frenneaux (Cardiovascular Medicine) and later with Professor Nick Freemantle (Epidemiology & Biostatistics) and Professor Mark Viant (Metabolomics). His thesis entitled ‘On perhexiline and its application to myocardial protection during cardiac surgery’ was awarded PhD without correction in June 2012.

Mr Drury won the Ronald Edward medal for best scientific presentation at the Society for Cardiothoracic Surgery annual meeting in 2008 and was awarded a Wellcome Trust Value in People award in 2009 to visit Professor John Horowitz and A/Prof Benedetta Sallustio at the University of Adelaide. He was awarded an Overseas Travel grant to present his work at the American Heart Association in 2011 and won the Sankey Research Prize for best presentation at their annual research meeting in 2012. He was recently awarded a Hunterian Professorship from the Royal College of Surgeons of England for his work on myocardial protection during surgery in children

His main research interests are in surgery for congenital heart disease, clinical trials, myocardial protection during cardiac surgery, adaptations to chronic hypoxaemia, and patient & public involvement in research. In 2015, he was awarded a British Heart Foundation Intermediate Clinical Research Fellowship to develop the research programme in paediatric cardiac surgery at Birmingham Children's Hospital and this was extended in 2019 to focus on improving the outcomes of complex surgery in neonates.

Mr Nigel Drury and Dr Victoria Stoll speak about how their individual research focuses on improving outcomes for children and adults with Congenital Heart Disease.

Mr Drury has taught undergraduates on the MB ChB and BDS courses, examined for the OSCE component of MB ChB course, and supervised research projects for BMedSci and MB ChB students at the University of Birmingham.

Mr Drury currently has openings for self-funded PhD students in the areas of:

• the functionally univentricular heart, including Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome and the Fontan circulation
• organ protection during paediatric cardiac surgery, including myocardial and neuroprotection

 Please email n.e.drury@bham.ac.uk

Mr Drury's main research interests are in surgery for congenital heart disease, clinical trials, myocardial protection during cardiac surgery, adaptations to chronic hypoxaemia, and patient & public involvement in research.

Congenital heart disease

Mr Drury led the James Lind Alliance Congenital Heart Disease Priority Setting Partnership bringing together patients with lived experience of CHD, parents, charities, and clinicians on an equal footing to identify national priorities for research. This has informed the development of a national strategy to address the priorities, with endorsement from national charity and professional partner organisations, including the development of a national network for conducting multi-centre studies, a national PPI group, and working groups to focus on each of the priorities.

He is leading local studies to evaluate the long-term outcomes of children who have undergone the arterial switch operation for transposition of the great arteries and the Fontan procedure for single ventricle palliation. He is also involved in development of the cardiac morphology archive at Birmingham Children’s Hospital, to maximise its research potential and translate into improvements in patient care.

Myocardial protection

Mr Drury is Chief Investigator of the only two UK multi-centre clinical trials in children’s heart surgery, both funded by the BHF: the Bilateral Remote Ischaemic Conditioning in Children (BRICC) trial and the del Nido versus St Thomas’ blood cardioplegia in the young (DESTINY) trial.’ In collaboration with Prof Warwick Dunn and colleagues at University of Liverpool, he is using metabolomic techniques to understand the effects of chronic hypoxia on the immature myocardium and how this may affect the recovery of heart function following surgery.

He has previously been involved in three clinical trials of manipulating myocardial metabolism to improve myocardial protection in adults. The HINGE (Hypertrophy INsulin Glucose and Electrolytes) trial recruited over 200 patients and demonstrated that glucose-insulin-potassium infusion improved short-term outcomes in patients undergoing aortic valve replacement for aortic stenosis. The CASPER and HYPER trials found that in almost 400 patients, oral perhexiline did not improve myocardial protection during surgery for coronary artery bypass grafting or aortic valve replacement.

• Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England (2015- )
• NTN Specialist Registrar in Cardiothoracic Surgery in the West Midlands (2010-2016)
• Member of the British Society for Cardiovascular Research (2009- )
• Member of the Society for Cardiothoracic Surgery in Great Britain and Ireland (2006- )
• Member of the British Congenital Cardiac Association (2005- )