Justin’s journal article set to rewrite medical textbooks | News

Congratulations to Associate Medical Director and Consultant Intensivist and Anaesthetist, Justin Kirk-Bayley who has had a landmark article published in Anaesthesia Journal, which questions historic thinking around what determines blood flow.

The article, Energy, flow and pressure in the cardiovascular system: a narrative review of how the circulation works is the result of extensive studies into how blood moves around the body, especially during anaesthesia and in critical care patients.

Writing with three other intensive care specialists from NHS trusts in Northampton, Winchester and Shrewsbury, Justin reviewed the available clinical research with the aim of providing a better understanding of what determines blood flow in the circulation.

He found that traditional teaching, emphasising pressure measurements such as blood pressure or venous pressure to guide treatment, could be confusing or misleading and lead to potentially harmful treatment. 

Justin said: “Myself and the other article authors have been teaching heart ultrasound for over a decade. As part of the evolution of the science of that, our understanding of how the heart pumps and how the blood circulation reacts to it has advanced quite dramatically, but what's still taught at a basic level hasn't really been updated in line with this. 

“We thought we should really piece our knowledge together and tell people about it from the highest podium that we could, so the article in Anaesthesia Journal, which is one of the top three international anaesthetic journals, addresses this.

“The article does lay the foundations for changing medical textbooks of the future.”