Adrian Crucean
Adrian Crucean is a Specialty Doctor in Congenital Heart Surgery at Birmingham Children’s and Queen Elizabeth Hospitals. He is a honorary Senior Lecturer at the University of Birmingham. He graduated and briefly trained in Romania and then in Italy where he obtained the Master degree in Paediatric Cardiac Surgery and the PhD title in Foetal Cardiac Surgery awarded by the University of Sant’Anna, Pisa. His professional path took him to Great Ormond Street Hospital in London and to Glenfield Hospital in Leicester. He spent time in clinical research with Professor EH Blackstone at The Cleveland Clinic, Ohio, USA. A long time interest in cardiac morphology came to fruition when he became a curator of the historical cardiac archive at Birmingham Children’s Hospital under the guidance of Professor RH Anderson and Mr WJ Brawn. The clinical and surgical experience enables him to bring new insights into the fascinating world of congenitally malformed hearts.
Anne Banning
Anne Banning is a Cardiac Physiologist specialising in Paediatrics and congenital echo at Southampton University Hospital. She initially trained in adult echocardiography in London and worked in industry as a product specialist. She has adult accreditation with the British Society of Echocardiography and the European EACVI accreditation in CHD. She has an interest in screening athletes using echocardiography, and is involved with the Oxford University Boat Club. For the last 2 years she has been involved as Organising Faculty for the Birmingham/Southampton Congenital Heart echo courses and was recently co-opted onto the steering group of the British Congenital Cardiac Association (BCCA) as the National Physiologist representative.
Anna Seale
Dr Anna Seale is a consultant paediatric and fetal cardiologist at Birmingham Children’s Hospital. Her fetal work is based in Birmingham Women’s Hospital. She graduated from Cambridge University in 1994 and pursued a career in Paediatrics. She was attracted to Paediatric Cardiology and trained in this specialty at Great Ormond Street and Royal Brompton Hospitals, London. Following a research period studying pulmonary vein stenosis, for which she was awarded a Doctor of Medicine (Cambridge), Dr Seale was appointed as Senior Cardiac Imaging Fellow at Boston Children’s Hospital, USA. Here she consolidated her experience in echocardiography, fetal and cardiac magnetic resonance imaging. She returned to the UK in 2008 and working as a paediatric and fetal cardiology consultant at the Royal Brompton Hospital and Queen Charlotte’s Hospitals, she was the lead in paediatric cardiac imaging. She moved to Birmingham Children’s Hospital in 2013. Dr Seale’s research interests are in prenatal diagnosis, echocardiography and pulmonary vein stenosis. Out of work, Dr Seale enjoys spending time with her family, ski-mountaineering and endurance sports.
Tara Bharucha
Dr Tara Bharucha is a consultant paediatric and fetal cardiologist, and lead paediatric cardiologist at University Hospital Southampton. She graduated from Cambridge University in 1997, and after a period working in New Zealand, undertook paediatric training in Cambridge, Great Ormond Street and the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne. Subsequently she trained in paediatric cardiology in Southampton and spent a year as the heart failure, transplant and pulmonary hypertension fellow at the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne. Dr Bharucha undertook a further fellowship in echocardiography and fetal echocardiography at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. Her initial consultant post was at Leeds General Infirmary, and she moved back to Southampton to take up her current post in 2012. Her research interests include cardiomyopathy and echocardiography. She is an examiner for the European Association of Cardiovascular Imaging (EACVI) Accreditation in Echocardiography in Congenital Heart Disease.
