Are heart murmurs always serious?

By Dr Mark Scoote
Cardiology

Dr Mark Scoote is a consultant cardiologist, serving patients in North East Essex, based in Colchester. He holds NHS Consultant contracts with East Suffolk and North Essex NHS Foundation Trust and at the Essex Cardiothoracic Centre in Basildon. He has private patient practicing permissions at the Oaks Hospital in Colchester and The Brook suite, Nash Basildon Unit at the Essex Cardiothoracic Centre.

His name was entered onto the GMC specialist register for both Cardiology and General Internal Medicine in 2008 and he was appointed as a consultant cardiologist in 2009 and has experience in managing patients across the whole range of cardiology practice and assessing patients with symptoms such as chest pain, breathlessness, palpitations, dizzy spells and blackouts. He provides assessments of individuals cardiac risk status and blood pressure. Dr Scoote provides specialist input into cardiac imaging modalities such as CT coronary angiography and echocardiography and holds National Society accreditations in these areas to perform this role.
 
Dr Scoote has excellent academic credentials. He undertook his medical studies at St Bartholomew's Hospital in London, where he qualified as a doctor in 1997, earning distinctions in final MBBS examinations. He additionally obtained a Batchelor of Science degree with first class honours from the University of London in Medical Sciences (anatomy) in 1994. He passed the exacting standards of the membership examinations of the Royal College of Physicians in 2000, within 3 years of qualifying with his primary medical degree and thereafter entered postgraduate training in Cardiology in London which included posts at prestigious Cardiology institutions and London teaching Hospitals such as the London Chest Hospital, St Bartholomew’s Hospital, The Royal Brompton Hospital and the Royal Free Hospital.

Dr Scoote further enhanced his knowledge by earning a PhD in the field of Cardiac Physiology from the National Heart & Lung Institute at Imperial College London in 2005. His research findings were published in peer review journals and presented at both national and international cardiology scientific conferences such as the British Cardiovascular Society and the American Heart Association. He was elected as a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of London in 2014. In 2020 he was awarded a Masters degree in Medical and Healthcare from Anglia Ruskin University, Essex.
 
In addition to his academic and clinical accomplishments, Dr Scoote is an active contributor to undergraduate and postgraduate medical education. He is the training programme director for medical postgraduate training in cardiology for Health Education East of England region, and supervises the training of doctors up their qualification to consultant level throughout the whole of Essex. He is an educational supervisor for many junior doctors in training and lectures annually on cardiology topics at Anglia Ruskin medical school. He has excellent feedback on his communication skills and manner from such medical education activities, correlating with his bedside manner and communication skills with patients, which is assessed annually and recognised as part of his annual consultant appraisal process.

Overall assessment of their patients