The physiology of dyspnoea and why patients feel what they feel

Helen Ward has been a Consultant Respiratory Physician at The Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust since February 2013. She has a particular interest in integrated care, the assessment and management of chronic breathlessness and end of life care in non-malignant respiratory disease. She was a trustee for the British Thoracic Society (BTS) and a member of the BTS board for 4 years until June 2023 and is the current President-Elect for the Association of Respiratory Technology and Physiology (ARTP). She also represents the BTS on the NHS England Respiratory Delivery Board which has oversight of the delivery of the Long Term Plan (LTP) for Respiratory. She is the West Midlands Respiratory Clinical Director for the Respiratory network.

Kyle Pattinson is Associate Professor at the University of Oxford and Honorary Consultant Anaesthetist at Oxford University Hospitals. His research focuses on the brain mechanisms of breathlessness, integrating functional neuroimaging, virtual reality, respiratory physiology, and experimental medicine to understand how breathlessness is perceived and modulated. He has led studies of breathlessness in conditions including COPD, asthma, and long COVID, with particular expertise in respiratory interoception and the neural circuitry of breathing.

Dr Lucy Speakman worked as a Respiratory Nurse in the community in Oxford for 23 years, focusing particularly on end-of-life care for people with COPD and ILD, with a special interest in supporting people with complex breathlessness. Following completion of The Advanced Certificate of Palliative Care at Oxford Brookes University, she progressed to a Professional Doctorate at Oxford Brookes which examined the experiences of community respiratory nurses supporting people with breathlessness using hermeneutic phenomenology. Lucy is now working as the Clinical Research Engagement Nurse and is an NIHR Senior Research Leader at Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust.

Dr Karl Sylvester is Consultant Healthcare Scientist and Head of Joint Respiratory Physiology at both Cambridge University Hospitals and Royal Papworth Hospital NHS Foundation Trusts. He is also clinical lead for the breathlessness pathways at the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Community Diagnostic Centres. His specialist interest is the performance and interpretation of cardio-pulmonary exercise testing, especially in its identification of breathing pattern disorders. He is faculty lead for the ARTP’s annual CPET course and faculty director for the UCLA/Cambridge CPET course. Dr Sylvester initially joined Cambridge University Hospitals after completing a PhD investigating respiratory complications in patients with sickle cell disease. He is the current President of ARTP and has previously been ARTP Honorary Chair. He also sits on the BTS Science & Research committee representing ARTP.

Paul Burns is a Respiratory and Sleep Clinical Scientist and Head of the Respiratory and Sleep Physiology Service at the Royal Hospital for Children, Glasgow. Following early clinical experience in adult services, he has worked in paediatric respiratory and sleep medicine for the past 17 years. He leads specialised respiratory and sleep diagnostic services and have expertise in the performance and interpretation of advanced physiological investigations. His clinical and research interests include asthma, congenital lung disease, exercise-induced laryngeal obstruction (EILO), and the physiological assessment of breathlessness. He has a particular interest in cardiopulmonary exercise testing (CPET), using exercise physiology to diagnose, characterise, and monitor respiratory and cardiac disease. His work is focused on translating complex physiological data into clinically meaningful answers that improve patient care.