interesting careers with a biomed degree?

Hi!

I've just finished my biomed degree, but I'm afraid I'm aiming for the medicine route. However, I have had quite a bit of experience attached to a cardiovascular/microcirculatory research group.

There's just something about the heart that's absolutely fascinating to me.
Mechanically, it's an interesting organ- lots of pressure changes and physical movement happening (valves, blood flow, cardiomyocyte contractility).
From a clinical point of view, cardiovascular diseases make up the leading cause of death in most countries around the world, there are a whole raft of technical/surgical procedures which can be employed (ranging from stenting a coronary artery to open cardiac surgery), and there are so many new avenues opening up for medical research in heart-related specialisms.

And when you drill down to the "nuts and bolts" (take the no-reflow phenomenon) there's a vast amount we still don't know, both in terms of mechanisms and also whether components of these mechanisms and pathways can be used therapeutically. And with the lab work itself, you can name a technique and it's probably used in cardiovascular research. Animal models, perfusion chambers, Langendorff hearts, flow cytometry, cell culture, electrophysiology, hypoxic chambers, immuno work, microscopy, metabolomics- the list goes on and on!

I hope that's been of some use! If you really want to know my niche area of interest, it would be the role of the microcirculation in causing myocardial ischaemia reperfusion injury (again, with so many applicable settings: myothis is scardial infarctions, open heart surgery, cardiopulmonary bypass, etc, etc)