Speciality: Geriatric medicine.
Sub specialities: Memory problems including Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias. Falls and Syncope and related disorders. Parkinson’s disease and movement disorders.
Professor Conal Cunningham is a Consultant Geriatrician and Physician with a special interest in syncope and Parkinson's disease in MISA, St. James’s Hospital. He is also the current MISA Director.
He has been a Consultant Geriatrician in the MedEl Directorate, St. James’s Hospital since October 2000 and was the MedEl Clinical Director from 2011 to 2023. His priority is for the continuation, promotion and enhancement of patient-centred care in MISA which was established as a centre of excellence in care of the older person in 2016.
Professor Cunningham was involved in establishing the Falls and Syncope Unit in St. James’s Hospital where he works with his consultant and multidisciplinary colleagues. The Falls and Syncope Unit treats approximately 3,000 patients a year with unexplained falls, syncope and related disorders and is the largest unit of its type in Europe. Professor Cunningham has numerous publications in the area of falls and orthostatic hypotension.
He was also instrumental in setting up the Parkinson's disease/Movement Disorder Clinic in MISA which is an outpatient clinic for people with movement disorders. This is a collaboration between gerontology, neurology and psychiatry services in the hospital. About a third of Parkinson’s patients have cardiac autonomic problems and are also seen by Professor Cunningham in the Falls and Syncope Unit for assessment and management in conjunction with Ms. Anna Mullen, our Parkinson’s Advanced Nurse Practitioner. This service has proved to be very successful.
Professor Cunningham also treats patients in his Outpatient Clinic for Geriatric Medicine, a very busy clinical general and dementia service which sees over 600 people with dementia per year. He also sees patients in the Memory Clinic which sees over 3,000 patients with mild cognitive impairment and dementia per year.
He participates with his MISA consultant colleagues in the acute stroke rota as well as the general age-related rota for seeing acutely unwell patients. He is also one of the consultants responsible for approximately 1,500 inpatients admitted to MISA each year.
Professor Cunningham graduated from University College Cork in 1991.
He received his initial post graduate training in Geriatric Medicine in St. James’s Hospital, Dublin and obtained an MD in Alzheimer's disease from Trinity College in 2000. He did further Post Graduate training in Geriatric Medicine in Newcastle, England where he received training in the investigation of blackouts in older people under Professor Rose Anne Kenny.
He completed his MD thesis in the field of Alzheimer’s disease dementia and oestrogen while working as a research fellow at the Mercer’s Institute for Research in Ageing between 1996-1999. He was appointed as Senior Lecturer in 2006 and Clinical Associate Professor in 2018 at Trinity College Dublin.
He continues to be active in research in the areas of malnutrition, frailty, rehabilitation and falls and has published over 120 papers in peer-reviewed journals.
His research interests include the diagnosis and management of cognitive impairment and dementia, nutrition and rehabilitation and the treatment and investigation of falls, blackouts and low blood pressure conditions in older people. He has published in all of these areas.
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Via post:
Geriatric Medicine
St James's Hospital
Dublin 8