In children with congenital heart disease (CHD), exercise intolerance and reduced activity are major determinants of cardiovascular outcome and quality of life. There is a lack of data on the pathophysiological mechanisms of cardiac exercise limitations and inadequate diagnostic (such as imaging) tools during exercise. There is also a lack of of disease specific tailored training programmes and of knowledge of long-term treatment effects in children.

Over the last 10 years, under the leadership of Prof Stuart, we have established a dedicated paediatric cardiology exercise research programme aiming at better understanding cardiac physiology and pathophysiology under stress in CHD. The Bristol collaboration with the Children’s Health and Exercise Research Centre at the University of Exeter (Prof Craig Williams) has been very successful as part of the GW4 initiative and developed several joint PhD studentships, using MRI and echocardiography as outcome measures in efficacy but also effectiveness studies of exercise training in CHD. At the same time, Stuart and Pieles has established a partership with Canon Medicals and Manchester United FC for defining cardiac adaptations to exercise and long-term effects of elite training in childhood athletes. Prof Stuart and Gonzalez-Corcia are leading the electrophysiology research and have been internationally recognised for their work on Brugada Syndrome, sudden cardiac death in hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and other arrhythmogenic CHD. Furthermore our research was integrated into the 100,000 genome project to study genotype – phenotype correlations in paediatric cardiomyopathies.