David Gradwell
09.35 - 10.00 - History of Aviation Medicine Research
Professor David Gradwell
King’s College London appointed David as Professor of Aerospace Medicine at the end of 2012. He had previously served for more than 28 years in the RAF where he became Whittingham Professor of Aviation Medicine and was appointed a Queen’s Honorary Surgeon. In his current role he is responsible for all postgraduate teaching and training in aviation medicine at KCL and students come from the UK and worldwide. He is also the Civilian Consultant Advisor in Aviation Medicine to the Royal Air Force.
David has set up a specialist aeromedical clinic at the Lane Fox Respiratory Unit at St Thomas’ Hospital, as reported in Lancet Respiratory. At this clinic patients with significant illness wishing to undertake air travel can be seen, assessed and their clinician advised on further steps that could be taken to assess or mitigate the potential hazards of flight. Referrals include respiratory, cardiac, haematological and neurological patients.
Although undertaking medical training in Scotland returning to St Thomas’ hospital is something of a homecoming for David as he gained his PhD there, although the high altitude experiments were conducted in a specialist hypobaric chamber at Farnborough. His research interests are in altitude physiology and the effects of both high performance flight on professional aircrew as well as the fitness and protection of patients undertaking more conventional air travel.
David is a Fellow of the Royal Colleges of Physicians in London and Edinburgh and he Chairs the Specialty Advisory Committee in Aviation and Space Medicine of the JRCPTB. He led the process for the new approval of Aviation & Space Medicine speciality training and new trainees are now undertaking that programme. David is the senior editor of the UK standard textbook, Ernsting’s Aviation & Space Medicine which won the best new book in the medicine category at the BMA book awards last year. He is a recent past President of the Aerospace Medical Association, is President of the Association of Aviation Medical Examiners and Chancellor of the International Academy of Aviation & Space Medicine.
