Dr Anita Macnab

Having qualified as a doctor from Manchester University in 1991, Dr Anita Macnab attained her MRCP from the Royal College of Physicians (London) in 1994. She began her cardiology specialist training in the Northwest Deanery in1995 and did a Research Fellowship at Wythenshawe Hospital, Manchester, developing 3-dimensional echocardiography in the setting of mitral valve repair surgery. Since 2005 Dr Macnab has worked as a Consultant Cardiologist in the same hospital leading various services including the echocardiography service, the valve service, the adult congenital service and the rapid access chest pain service.

Her previous regional roles have included Imaging Lead for the Greater Manchester and Cheshire Cardiac Network and Imaging Lead for the South Sector Partnership of Manchester. National roles include a 6-year tenure on the British Society of Echocardiography (BSE) council. She is currently the National Lead for Stress Echocardiography for the BSE and her biggest achievement has been to set up the world’s first stress echocardiography accreditation programme. This programme has been running since 2017 and she is their Chief Examiner. Dr Macnab has written many of the service guidance documents for echocardiography on behalf of the BSE.

Along with her interventional colleagues at Wythenshawe hospital, Dr Macnab has played an integral part in the delivery of various technologies to fix the heart from the percutaneous route (i.e without the need for open heart surgery). This has included closing holes in the heart (atrial septal defect closure), plugging areas of the heart that form clots (LA appendage occlusion devices), repairing prosthetic valves that fail (closing para-valvular leaks) and replacing heart valves that are defective (TAVI valves for aortic valve narrowing). The most notable achievement in this regard was in 2010 when Dr Macnab became the lead for the echocardiography aspects for the UK percutaneous mitral repair programme. This procedure uses clips delivered from the leg to repair the mitral valve. Wythenshawe Hospital became one of only 3 UK centres where this procedure was commissioned to treat patients with severe mitral valve disease and she has lectured at various national and international meetings on this topic since then.

Dr Macnab has been providing private echocardiography services at the The Alexandra Hospital since 2006. She performs the following procedures on patients over the age of eighteen-

1. Transthoracic Echocardiography (standard ultrasound scan of the heart)
2. Exercise stress Echocardiography (ultrasound during a treadmill exercise test)
3. Pharmacological Stress Echocardiography (ultrasound when a drug called Dobutamine is used to stress the heart)
4. Transoesophageal Echocardiography with 3D (detailed internal ultrasound of the heart under sedation)
5. Bubble Echocardiography (an ultrasound study usually done for young stroke patients)
6. Contrast Echocardiography (a transthoracic study where the images are enhanced by the use of a contrast medium)

Dr Macnab also offers a one-stop cardiology clinic appointment, which includes the following in one sitting -

• A full consultation
• An ECG
• An echocardiogram
• A discussion about the results.
• A discussion about future investigations/follow-up/onward referral.

This clinic is particularly suited to patients who require a diagnosis of a heart murmur or a cardiac reason for breathlessness or a cardiac cause for chest pain. Individuals who need screening for an inherited cardiac condition (i.e they have a family member with a known inheritable cardiac condition for eg a cardiomyopathy) would be suitable for this type of appointment. These clinics would also suit patients who need regular surveillance echocardiogram scans for a known condition for example valve disease or for the echocardiographic monitoring for chemotherapy.

Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians (London)
Member of the British Society of Echocardiography
Member of the British Cardiovascular Society
Member of the British Medical Association