Dr Laura Corr
Consultant Cardiologist MBBS PhD FRCP FESC
Academic Qualifications
Dr Laura Corr qualified in medicine at University College Hospital in 1981 and went on to higher medical training at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School, where she worked with many of the outstanding academic physicians of the day.
She won a prestigious Medical Research Council Training Fellowship to study for a PhD in vascular biology at University College London and the Royal Brompton Hospital, which was awarded in 1991. Dr Corr's research for it had convinced her to pursue a career in cardiology and she was subsequently appointed to the Senior Registrar post at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School and St Mary's Hospital, London.
When interventional cardiology – angiography, angioplasty and stenting – was still developing, Dr Corr won a Royal Society of Medicine European Fellowship to study advanced interventional techniques in France. She worked as Medicin Attaché in a unit performing over 3,000 cases per year (UK average then was 230 per year). Her training included complex angioplasty, stenting and use of rotablation, intravascular angioscopy and ultrasound. She continued her academic interest with research into oncogenes.
Dr Corr returned to the UK as Consultant Interventional Cardiologist to the Regional Cardiothoracic Unit at the Brook Hospital, the busiest interventional cardiac unit in the United Kingdom. At that time, there were a total of 19 female consultant cardiologists in the United Kingdom, of whom 5 were interventional.
She performed over 400 procedures a year, including angioplasty and stenting, valvuloplasty, permanent pacemaker insertion, and selective arterial embolisation. She also established regular meetings with GPs, dieticians, cardiac technicians, practice nurses and industry representatives to improve coordination of cardiac services: "Care in the Community" won a Health of the Nation Award.
Dr Corr was elected a Fellow of the European Society of Cardiology in 1995 and in the same year she was appointed Consultant Cardiologist at Guy's and St Thomas' Hospital. Her role included care of all aspects of adult cardiology, routine and emergency procedures and the supervision and training of specialist registrars, nursing and technical staff. As Director of Outreach, she coordinated cardiac care across primary, secondary and tertiary services in the South East of England, establishing a cardiac catheter laboratory in a linked busy district general hospital and two award-winning GP cardiology projects. She was invited to lecture general physicians and cardiologists in the UK and internationally on implementation of effective management of cardiac disease.
In 1997, Dr Corr was elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians.