Dr Christopher Lockhart

Dr Lockhart is a Consultant Cardiologist and network lead for Adult Congenital Heart Disease working at the Royal Victoria Hospital within the Belfast Trust.

After graduating with honours from Queens University Belfast in 2002, he gained membership of the Royal College of Physicians in 2005, and subsequently entered the specialty training programme for adult cardiology in Northern Ireland. Through 2010-2011 he worked in the adult congenital heart disease department in the Royal Brompton Hospital in London, and completed his training in 2012 at the Royal Victoria Hospital focusing on paediatric cardiology.

Dr Lockhart took up post in Belfast as a consultant ACHD cardiologist in august 2012 and since then, in addition to overseeing the clinical care of ACHD patients in Belfast, has been responsible for setting up a regional ACHD service for Northern Ireland with network links to other major centres, and a formal transition service from paediatric cardiology. He oversees a formal ACHD research programme.

His clinical interests cover all aspects of ACHD care including inpatient and outpatient care, pulmonary hypertension associated with congenital heart disease, heart disease and pregnancy, cardiac catheterisation in ACHD patients and also trans-oesophageal echocardiography, in particular during interventional ACHD procedures.

With advances in paediatric cardiology and in particular paediatric cardiac surgery, more children are surviving, often well into adulthood. There are now more adults living with congenital heart disease in the UK than children; often requiring at least one further surgery in their teenage/adult year.

This lecture will discuss the long term physical and psychological outcomes in those with cardiac defects repaired in infancy and childhood, specifically with reference to the population in Ireland.