ProfessorLuigi Camporota

Professor Luigi Camporota is Joan Reece Chair in Critical Care at Imperial College London and a Consultant in Critical Care at Hammersmith Hospital, Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust.

He leads the Applied Cardiorespiratory Physiology and Extracorporeal Support group within the Division of Anaesthetics, Pain Medicine and Intensive Care. The group investigates severe cardiac and respiratory failure and how support can be adapted to individual physiology. Its work spans physiological phenotyping of the injured lung, interactions between breathing, the lungs and circulation, extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, extracorporeal carbon dioxide removal, computational modelling and clinical trials. A central strand examines whether extracorporeal support can rest the injured lung while allowing selected patients to remain awake, breathe spontaneously and mobilise, reducing exposure to invasive ventilation, deep sedation and immobility.

His clinical and research work focuses on acute respiratory failure, acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), advanced mechanical ventilation and extracorporeal life support.

Before joining Imperial, he was Professor of Intensive Care Medicine at King’s College London and a Consultant in Critical Care at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust from 2011 to 2026. He led its Severe Cardio-Respiratory Failure and ECMO Service from 2018 to 2025.

He is Co-Chair of the joint American Thoracic Society, European Society of Intensive Care Medicine and Society of Critical Care Medicine task force developing a new definition of ARDS.

He co-chaired the 2023 ESICM guidelines on ARDS, served on the 2012 Berlin Definition Task Force.

He is a past-chair of the ESICM Acute Respiratory Failure Section from 2020 to 2023.

He is a current Co-Director of the ESICM Acute Respiratory Failure and Mechanical Ventilation Pathway, a three-level programme progressing from foundation teaching through clinical application to advanced integration and simulation. He is also an Associate Editor of Critical Care and a member of the ESICM Scientific Committee.

He is Joint Chief Investigator of the NIHR-funded RELEASE trial of airway pressure release ventilation in acute hypoxaemic respiratory failure and Co-Chief Investigator of the NIHR-funded ROMEO trial, comparing rest with moderate mechanical ventilation during ECMO. He is also Principal Investigator of a funded study of near-apnoea ventilation during ECMO for severe ARDS.

He has published more than 320 peer-reviewed articles and is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, the Faculty of Intensive Care Medicine and the European Respiratory Society.