Archibald Stewart Hunter

Archibald Stewart Hunter qualified in medicine in Aberdeen in 1960 and decided on a career in paediatrics. During a training post at Great Ormond Street he became interested in children with heart disease. After further training in Edinburgh he was appointed to a post in Newcastle, where he began to develop one of the UK’s most outstanding children’s heart units. He championed the development of echocardiography to investigate babies born with congenital heart disease. Eight in every 1000 babies are born with a significant heart defect and 30% of these will require intervention in the first year of life. In 1974 a quarter of those with one of the most common defects, tetralogy of Fallot, died during attempted surgical correction. Now it is most unusual for such an operation not to be successful. There have been major advances in surgery and anaesthesia, but a prerequisite for an optimal outcome is an accurate definition of the nature of the …