A titan of Cardiovascular Research: Professor Peter Sleight (1929–2020)

Professor Peter Sleight, who has died aged 91 years, led some of the most striking changes in modern cardiology evidence and practice, inspiring a generation of trainees in the UK and worldwide (Figure 1). Peter Sleight graduated in medicine in 1953 from University of Cambridge and St. Bartholomew’s Hospital Medical School. He was appointed as Consultant Physician and Cardiologist in Oxford in 1964 and established the University Department of Cardiovascular Medicine in Oxford with his appointment as the first British Heart Foundation Field Marshal Earl Alexander of Tunis Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine in 1973, a post that he held until his retirement in 1994. Peter built up the University Department in Oxford during the 1970s, combining clinical patient care with research to understand cardiovascular physiology and the management of common cardiovascular conditions. In doing so, he attracted trainees to Oxford and helped place UK cardiology on the world stage. His ability and willingness to provide both leadership and to develop his young trainees’ ideas and careers is exemplified by his best-known achievements, the International Studies of Infarct Survival (ISIS) randomized controlled clinical trials. In the late 1970s, working with his then PhD student Salim Yusuf, and a young trainee in Oxford, Rory Collins, he was introduced to Richard Peto, signalling the start of a remarkable cross-disciplinary collaboration that was destined to transform modern cardiology clinical research and patient management, worldwide. The ISIS trials established the concept of the ‘mega trial’, focusing on a simple trial design that allowed ready implementation across multiple centres, recruiting very large numbers of patients to give unambiguous answers that would instantly change practice. Furthermore, the trials established a new principle using a factorial design to test two or more therapies, alone and in combination. This approach maintained statistical power but magnified the clinical impact of the trial results, and also enabled testing of simple, inexpensive treatments in a cost-effective way, by combining with new proprietary agents.