Dr Peter Cowburn

Dr Peter Cowburn is a Consultant Cardiologist with a specialist interest in heart failure at University Hospital Southampton, where he was appointed as a consultant in 2004 and has served as Clinical Lead for Heart Failure for more than 16 years. He trained in Newcastle and spent the early part of his career in the North East of England before moving to Glasgow, where he completed his MD thesis under Professor John Cleland. His doctoral research, awarded with commendation, examined the haemodynamic effects of endothelin and endothelin receptor antagonists in patients with chronic heart failure.

Following specialist registrar training in the Wessex region, Dr Cowburn undertook an 18-month advanced heart failure and device fellowship in Toronto, Canada, where he developed specialist expertise in cardiac resynchronisation therapy (CRT). He went on to report the first case series of inotrope-supported CRT and has maintained a strong academic and clinical interest in the haemodynamic and renal effects of CRT.

Dr Cowburn has played a prominent role in national heart failure leadership. He was Deputy Chair of the British Society for Heart Failure between 2007 and 2009, having previously served as a Councillor, and later returned to the Board as Treasurer from 2017 to 2019. At Southampton General Hospital, he helped establish a pioneering nurse-led inpatient heart failure service in 2008, resulting in a significant reduction in inpatient mortality, and in 2010 he established the UK’s first inpatient ultrafiltration programme. 

Alongside his colleague Andrew Flett, Dr Cowburn has been implanting CardioMEMS pulmonary artery pressure monitoring devices since 2017, developing the largest patient series in the UK and enabling remote, proactive management of heart failure. He is a busy general cardiologist with broad expertise, undertaking permanent pacemaker implantation including CRT, coronary angiography, and right heart catheterisation in selected patients.

Dr Cowburn continues to be actively involved in research and was Principal Investigator for the IRONMAN study, which demonstrated the clinical benefit of intravenous iron therapy in selected patients with heart failure. He also has a specialist interest in carcinoid heart disease and is part of the Wessex multidisciplinary team that achieved recognition as a European Centre of Excellence for the management of neuroendocrine tumours. More recently, he has been involved in the development of a patient-held digital health record in collaboration with the MyMedicalRecord team at University Hospital Southampton and the British Heart Foundation.

In recognition of his sustained contribution to the field, Dr Cowburn was awarded a Fellowship of the British Society for Heart Failure in 2022, joining a select group of UK and international clinicians honoured during the Society’s 25th anniversary.