Clinical expertise

Dr Rodney Franklin’s areas of expertise include:

He is experienced in managing and treating patients with a range of congenital and paediatric heart diseases including:

  • transposition of the great arteries
  • hypoplastic left heart syndrome
  • ventricular septal defect
  • tricuspid atresia
  • pulmonary atresia and stenosis
  • Kawasaki disease
  • double inlet ventricle
  • tetralogy of fallot
  • dysplasia of the tricuspid valvar and sub-valvar apparatus
  • arrhythmia
  • coronary artery stenosis


Biography

Dr Rodney Franklin is a consultant paediatric cardiologist, based at Royal Brompton Hospital, where he treats both private and NHS patients.

He studied medicine at University College Hospital (part of UCL) and graduated in 1979. He completed his research doctorate (MD) at the University of London in 1997 – a retrospective audit of 428 infants with functionally univentricular heart disease.

He was appointed as a consultant paediatric cardiologist at Royal Brompton Hospital in 1991.

Alongside his role, he is the clinical lead for the Congenital Heart Disease Audit and is chair of the National Congenital Heart Disease steering committee, which promotes data collection within specialist paediatric centres.


Research

Dr Rodney Franklin is involved with research to better understand and treat heart disease in children.

Over the last 20 years, he has initiated and developed a comprehensive six-digit coding-nomenclature system for paediatric and congenital cardiology. Now known as the international paediatric and congenital cardiac codes (IPCCC), it is used around the world.

He was the prime UK investigator for a paediatric cardiology quality of life inventory, using data from 800 patients. The project enables clinicians to better assess the degree to which heart disease impacts children and their families.

Publications

Dr Rodney Franklin has published over 110 papers and 6 book chapters related to paediatric cardiology.

He serves on the advisory editorial board for journals including Pediatric Cardiology, and World Journal of Pediatric & Congenital Heart Surgery.

He is the associate editor for Cardiology in the Young and reviews abstracts for the Association for European Paediatric Cardiology (AEPC).

Teaching

Dr Rodney Franklin is an honorary senior lecturer at the National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College London.

He has spoken at numerous national and international symposia and congresses on paediatric and fetal cardiology.