profile
Guido Pieles
Visiting Research Fellow
Baring Court CHERC
Baring Court, University of Exeter St Luke's Campus, Heavitree Road, Exeter, EX1 2LU, UK
Overview
Guido graduated in 2003 in the State Examination Medicine, Phillips-University of Marburg a.d.Lahn, Germany and between 2002 and 2007 was awarded his M.D. at Medical School Hanover, Germany and his D.Phil at the University of Oxford. In 2009 he attained his M.R.C.P.CH. (UK) in Paediatrics.
Having been awarded a NIHR Academic Clinical Fellow in Paediatrics, at the University of Bristol in 2007 he continued to specialise in Paediatric Cardiology Training at the Bristol Congenital Heart Centre. His current position as a NIHR Academic Clinical Lecturer in Paediatric Cardiology at the Bristol Heart Institute and Bristol Congenital Heart Centre is facilitating both his clinical and research roles.
As an honorary research fellow Guido is working on collaborative projects linked to play and exercise which form an essential part of children’s daily life and innumerable skills acquired during physical activity. Over the last two decades research at CHERC has provided health care and education professionals, as well as the public, with a wealth of knowledge on how exercise can contribute to the wellbeing of children. However, only recently has it become possible to image the heart directly during exercise. Guido’s research centers on the cardiac adaption to exercise in children with and without cardiac disease using advanced functional imaging modalities (Cardiac Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Echocardiography). Our research group under the lead of Prof Craig Williams uses these techniques to investigate the effects of exercise and exercise training on the heart in healthy children, young athletes and children with congenital heart disease. A second research question we try to address is the effect of hypoxia on the heart and the cardiac response of the untrained and trained heart to hypoxia using cardiac imaging but also molecular techniques. Both research themes will give us invaluable insights into the physiology of the healthy heart but more importantly can yield results that will help in the treatment of children with congenital heart disease and cancer.