Christopher Broyd, MBBS, PhD

Christopher Broyd, MBBS, PhD, is currently an interventional cardiology registrar—the UK equivalent of a fellow—at the Royal Free Hospital in London, England. A graduate of Kings College with honors, Broyd completed his medical and general cardiology training in New Zealand and North-West London. He also earned a PhD in intracoronary physiology at Imperial College in London and conduced post-doctoral research at the Hospital Clinico San Carlos in Madrid, Spain. He was shortlisted for the Samuel Levine AHA Young Investigator Award and has presented research at AHA, EuroPCR, ESC, and the PACE physiology course. After training, Broyd plans to seek a job in coronary intervention while maintaining an active research career.

Why did you decide to pursue interventional cardiology?

I started very briefly pursuing a career in cardiothoracic surgery. It interested me because I like working with my hands. But I realized that I enjoy more cerebral thinking as well as practical, and I think interventional cardiology broadly has both. The potential to benefit the patient is very high, and I really enjoy research as well.

How do you see the field changing in the next 5 years?

Cardiologists have a very nice, aggressive attitude about everything, so they are very keen to try and fix things if they can. If you look at the structural world, for example, you take TAVR, that’s going to move to a more moderate, younger risk group, and I think that will expand dramatically. In terms of coronary intervention, I guess I would say firstly we have to think about on whom we’re proceeding, and I suspect that we’re going to move very much into a world where everything is physiology-driven. I think the research studies that are going to appear in the next few years are going to prove a couple of things. One is that we’re very bad at assessing lesions angiographically and, two, that we need to rely on physiology a lot more heavily.

What is the best piece of advice your mentor has given you?

“The best interventionalists are those who know when NOT to do an angioplasty.”

What has surprised you most about becoming an interventional cardiologist?

The way everyone does things a little bit different. I really enjoy it because it means that I get to work with lots of really interesting and really innovative people, but it’s great being able to take all of their little bits, all of the things that they do well, and that becomes my training essentially.

If you weren’t an interventional cardiologist, what else could you see yourself doing and why?

I have a sommelier’s qualification in wine tasting so I could definitely see myself doing that, but I also took a year off and went to music school to play the guitar. So I’d like to somehow combine those two careers. I’d love to make my own wine—that’s my real dream. Unfortunately, in England we don’t have the soils of Milan, nor the weather, so we’re a little bit more limited. I could move to Rioja. Maybe that’s the answer.

What his nominator Chris Loder, BSc, PgCert (M), says:

Chris comes to our institution with a wonderful background that demonstrates his ability. His CV speaks for itself, and we are confident that he is one of the promises of the future. I feel it in my bones that he is going places.

* To nominate a stellar cardiology fellow for the Featured Fellow section of TCTMD’s Fellows Forum, click here.