Contact details
Dr Nick S Hopkinson
Clinical Senior Lecturer and Hon Consultant
National Heart and Lung Institute
Tel: +44 (0)20 7349 7776
Email:
Dr Nicholas S Hopkinson
Nick Hopkinson has been a Clinical Senior Lecturer at Imperial College since 2006. He is also an Honorary Consultant Chest Physician at The Royal Brompton and Chelsea & Westminster Hospitals. He qualified in Medicine at Cambridge and The London Hospital Medical College and went on to train in Respiratory and General Internal Medicine at St George’s and St Thomas’ Hospitals. He is clinical lead for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) at The Royal Brompton Hospital and runs a tertiary referral advanced COPD clinic with Professor Mike Polkey and Dr Matthew Hind where patients are assessed for novel treatments for their disease including endobronchial emphysema therapies. He has established a smoking cessation clinic within the trust and is responsible for developing pulmonary rehabilitation services. At Chelsea and Westminster Hospital he is involved in supervising a ward outreach service that reviews all COPD patients admitted acutely.
His major research interest is the causes of exercise limitation in patients with COPD. His publications have addressed the influence of genetic polymorphisms, corticosteroid therapy and the role of acute exacerbations in skeletal muscle impairment in this condition. He has also published work on the impact of bronchoscopic lung volume reduction on dynamic hyperinflation in patients with COPD and on transcranial magnetic stimulation of the diaphragm motor cortex in health and disease. Techniques employed include invasive measurement of respiratory pressures, cardiopulmonary exercise testing and the use of magnetic nerve stimulation to obtain non-volitional measures of muscle function. His work has been funded by The Wellcome Trust, The European Union, The British Lung Foundation and The Moulton Foundation. He works closely with Professor Mike Polkey and together with Professor John Moxham at King’s College Hospital and Dr Nick Hart at St Thomas’ they make up the London Respiratory Muscle Group which has undertaken a considerable body of collaborative research. Other external collaborations are with Professor Hugh Montgomery at UCH and he is also working with Iranian physicians to improve the care, in particular through pulmonary rehabilitation, of victims of mustard gas from the Iran Iraq war in the 1980’s. Within Imperial College he is involved in research with The Centre for Pervasive Sensing to develop more sophisticated integrated physiology and activity sensors to monitor patients in their home environment. He is a member of the European Respiratory Society and The Royal College of Physicians and served on the Science and Research Committee of The British Thoracic Society until the end of 2007. He is the editor of the BTS newsletter and was a medical advisor for ‘The Smoke House’ TV programme produced by Endemol.
