Dr Muhunthan Thillai (40) is heading up a team as part of a project, involving 12 hospitals across the world, to find quicker and easier ways to detect cardiac sarcoidosis, which can affect and kill even young and fit individuals.
If his research is successful, the disease – which causes patches of inflamed tissues to form in organs of the body – will be detectable through new tests that smaller hospitals, like Jersey’s, will be able to carry out in-house.
The team, which is based at Royal Papworth Hospital in Cambridge, is working with the world-renowned Cleveland Clinic in the USA and the Foundation for Sarcoidosis Research.
‘We have doing a lot of research. We initially got a £150,000 grant from the British Heart and Lung Foundation and we started to do quite well with the research,’ said Dr Thillai.
‘We got more research grants and we eventually teamed up with the Cleveland Clinic in America and the Foundation for Sarcoidosis Research decided to give us a $1 million grant. It will be a three-year project with 12 hospitals across the world.’
Dr Thillai, who is the lead clinician of the Cambridge Interstitial Lung Disease unit, said that the biggest problem with cardiac sarcoidosis was detecting it early enough for effective treatment.
He added that patients usually had to travel to specialist centres for tests, but his team’s research was aiming to develop simpler tests that could be carried out at many more hospitals.
‘We get patients who come across from Jersey to Royal Papworth because we review cardiac sarcoidosis cases as the largest heart and lung hospital in Europe,’ he said.
‘We typically detect the disease using MRI and PET scans, but what we are hoping is that we can develop easier ways of detecting it, such as [using] echo scans, blood tests and heart tracing.
‘If we do, then hospitals in places like Jersey will be able to carry out tests to detect it themselves, rather than patients having to fly over to London or Cambridge.’
He added: ‘It’s really important that cardiac sarcoidosis is detected more easily. It is difficult to detect because it often affects people who are young and very fit.
‘Someone who has it could have no idea and could, for example, be playing squash one day, have a heart attack and die. Sarcoidosis is usually a lung disease, but it can also affect the heart.’
