SPUMS Annual Scientific Meeting 2024

Dr Peter Wilmshurst

UK Cardiologist

Peter Wilmshurst and colleagues first reported paradoxical gas embolism in a diver with an atrial septal defect in 1986. That led to the recognition of the association between PFO and DCS, which was described almost simultaneously by Richard Moon and his colleagues from Duke University and Peter and his colleagues in 1989. Peter has demonstrated the link between shunt size and risk of DCS and he postulated the role of peripheral amplification of bubble emboli in aetiology of different manifestations of DCS. Peter and colleagues were the first to report PFO closure to prevent recurrence of DCS. They published the first descriptions of immersion pulmonary oedema in divers in 1981 and in surface swimmers in 1989.

Peter graduated from Manchester University in 1974. He received post-graduate training in medicine, cardiology and intensive care in Manchester, Oxford and London, leading to MRCP 1976 and FRCP 1996. His first consultant appointment was at St Thomas' Hospital, London in 1987, later moving to Yorkshire before joint appointments in Shrewsbury and Stoke-on-Trent as a consultant cardiologist. Simultaneously he was senior lecturer in medicine at the University of Keele. Following retirement, he returned to work part-time in Stoke.

Peter has been a scuba diver since 1971. He was doctor/diver on expeditions to survey the Gulf of Eilat in the 1970s and the barrier reef of Belize in the 1980s. He has been a member of the BSAC Medical Committee since 1977, including 10 years as Chair and, at the same time, a member of the BSAC National Diving Committee. Other roles include: Treasurer of the UK Sport Diving Medical Committee and previously Chair for five years; adviser to the Health and Safety Executive on cardiology standards for diving since 1994; member of the British Thoracic Society Fitness to Dive Subcommittee 2001; consultant to NASA in 1999 (Johnson Space Center, Houston, Texas) to advise on risk of PFO during sub-atmospheric DCS.

Peter has more than 200 peer-reviewed publications and book chapters. Less than half are on diving medicine. Topics include the association between migraine with aura and right-to-left shunts, the role of hypercholesterolaemia in aortic stenosis, inheritance of congenital heart disease and cardiomyopathies, cardiac arrhythmias, and management of coronary artery disease and cardiac failure. He also has over 200 articles in diving magazines on diving illnesses and water safety and has contributed to several UK television and radio programmes on diving.

His postgraduate awards related to diving medicine are Houlder Award from the Society of Underwater Technology 1989; Jacques Yves Cousteau Award 1990; Duke of Edinburgh Prize for Sports Medicine 1991 (first recipient); Gold Medal of the Huddersfield Medical Society 1994; Sir Robert Atkins Award from the Institute of Sports Medicine 2000; Fellowship of the Institute of Sport Medicine 2001; Foundation Fellowship of the Faculty of Sport and Exercise Medicine 2006; Colin McLeod Award from the British Sub-Aqua Club Jubilee Trust 2010 and Excellence in Diving Medicine Award from the Undersea and Hyperbaric Medical Society 2020. Peter has investigated research misconduct in UK and abroad. He has given evidence before Parliament’s Health Committee and Science and Technology Committee. He has also received awards for his contribution to research integrity: Health Watch Annual Award 2003; BMJ Editor's Award 2012 (first recipient) and Guardian of Truth and Integrity from the Brain Health Alliance 2022 (first recipient).