Denny Levett

Professor in Perioperative Medicine and Critical Care at the University of Southampton and a Consultant in Perioperative Medicine at Southampton University Hospital NHS Foundation trust (UHS).

Denny leads the perioperative medicine service at UHS including a pre-operative CPET service, a perioperative anaemia service, a surgery school, and prehabilitation. Denny has extensive clinical and research experience in cardiopulmonary exercise testing (CPET). She is president of the Perioperative Exercise Testing and Training Society (POETTS) and she established and has chaired the National Perioperative Cardiopulmonary Exercise Testing course in the UK biannually since 2009. She is part of the Fit 4 Surgery research group in Southampton, investigating exercise and nutritional optimisation before major surgery. She is the clinical CI for the multi-centre INSPIRE trial evaluating inspiratory muscle training before surgery as a means of reducing post-operative complications. She is one of the CI’s at the perioperative medicine clinical trials unit at the Royal College of Anaesthetists in the UK.

Denny was the Association of Anaesthetists Research Fellow and her PhD thesis involved evaluating exercise capacity at up to 8000m on Mount Everest as a member of the climbing team on the Caudwell Xtreme Everest Expedition. She was the Deputy Research Leader for this altitude field study of hypoxia adaptation and the follow up expedition Xtreme Everest 2, investigating exercise efficiency in Sherpas