Vascular Medicine

The University of Exeter Medical School is internationally renowned for its Vascular research. Particular strengths are:

• Clinical Microvascular and Macrovascular research in the diabetes and related disorders field
• Effects of dietary interventions
• Developing novel technologies for clinical assessment
• The roles of small vessel disease in stroke
• Links between periodontal disease and vascular dysfunction
• The Vascular Suite is part of the Peninsula NIHR Clinical Research Facility. This large collaborative group has many training posts for both postdoctoral level (4 currently) and PhD/MD (9 currently) level.

The research group is situated in a custom built physiology centre including 4 clinical areas at the Royal Devon & Exeter Hospital (Wonford), Exeter. The group possesses a considerable number of platform technologies for studying the human microvascular function including laser Doppler fluximetry (both single point and scanning), capillary microscopy, measurement of dynamic capillary pressure and wave form analysis, application of pharmacological agents by iontophoresis and microinjection, assessment of the permeability of the microcirculation using computerised capillary filtration co-efficient measurements and several techniques to explore the macrocirculation such as pulse wave velocity and pulse wave analysis, baro receptor sensitivity and brachial artery flow mediated vasodilation.