Dr Vinod Achan was educated at Mill Hill School, London, and Brasenose College, University of Oxford, where he was a scholar from 1988 to 1993. He was awarded the top First Class degree in Physiological Sciences (University of Oxford, 1990), the Martin Wronker University Prize in Medicine (1990) and a Hobson Memorial Clinical Scholarship (University of Oxford, 1990 to 1993). After his basic clinical training in London (including Cardiology at Hammersmith Hospital, Neurology at Queen’s Square and Intensive Care Medicine at St Thomas’ Hospital), he was appointed to the South West London Cardiology training programme in 1996. He was a Fulbright Scholar at the Stanford University School of Medicine, California, from 1999 to 2001, was awarded a PhD from the University of London in 2004, and was the Senior Interventional Cardiology Fellow at St George’s Hospital and Medical School for two consecutive years before his consultant appointment in October 2007.
Dr Vinod Achan has a special interest in the emergency invasive treatment of heart attacks. As the Senior Interventional Cardiology Fellow at St George’s Hospital and Medical School, he helped to set up a 24/7 primary PCI service for heart attack patients in southwest London. As a Consultant, he is the clinical lead for the 24/7 primary PCI service at Frimley Park Hospital, providing emergency invasive treatments for heart attack patients in Surrey, Hampshire and Berkshire from January 2010. He is very experienced at performing the following invasive procedures: coronary angiography, Percutaneous Coronary Intervention (PCI; balloon angioplasty and stenting of coronary arteries) and permanent pacemaker implantation. He also sees patients with chest pain, unexplained breathlessness, palpitations, arrhythmias including atrial fibrillation, high blood pressure, heart failure and general cardiovascular problems.