Professor Charles James Knight OBE

Professor Charles Knight is a highly experienced consultant cardiologist as well as the clinical director of cardiovascular services at Barts and the London NHS Trust, one of the largest cardiovascular departments in the UK. From 2008 to 2011, he served as honorary secretary of the British Cardiovascular Society, the professional body for UK cardiologists and other healthcare workers with an interest in cardiovascular medicine.

Professor Knight is a member of the Royal College of Physicians Cardiology Specialty Advisory Committee. He is an Associate Editor of Heart, the UK’s leading cardiovascular journal. He also serves as a specialist advisor to the NICE interventional procedures programme and leads cardiology training in London as Chair of the London Cardiology Specialty Training Committee. In addition, he is a member of the British Cardiovascular Society working group on acute cardiac care and the joint societies working group on renal denervation for hypertension.

Professor Knight has particular expertise in coronary angioplasty and stenting, with more than 15 years of high-volume experience. He assisted Professor Ulrich Sigwart in the world’s first septal ablation procedure at the Royal Brompton in June 1994. Since then, he has helped pioneer this non-surgical treatment for patients with heart muscle disease and now receives referrals from across the UK and abroad. He performs septal ablation for obstructive hypertrophic cardiomyopathy more frequently than any other UK cardiologist.

His research interests include acute coronary syndromes, renal and cardiac disease, and hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, in which he has authored more than 60 scientific papers. He is frequently invited to lecture at national and international meetings and has performed coronary angioplasty live for training purposes at major international conferences (EuroPCR and TCT).