Eight babies are born with congenital heart disease in Australia every day. While advances in medical care mean most now survive into adulthood, many experience lifelong fatigue, breathlessness, reduced exercise capacity, and cardiovascular complications.
Reduced exercise capacity is more than a limitation on everyday activities. In people with congenital heart disease, it is associated with poorer health outcomes, including a greater risk of hospitalisation. Yet people with congenital heart disease have historically been advised to restrict physical activity because of concerns about safety, creating uncertainty about how much exercise is safe, how hard people should exercise, and how exercise should be prescribed.
Dr Derek Tran’s research aims to address this by understanding why exercise capacity is reduced and determining how exercise can be used safely and effectively to help people with congenital heart disease live longer, healthier, and more active lives.
Dr Tran is a Heart Foundation Fellow and clinical exercise physiologist whose research combines exercise physiology, cardiopulmonary exercise testing, and clinical trials to identify what limits exercise capacity and determine the safest and most effective type, intensity, and amount of exercise for people with congenital heart disease.
His work has contributed to national exercise recommendations and international clinical guidelines, helping shift clinical practice away from unnecessary exercise restriction towards safe, evidence-based exercise prescription.
More recently, his research has focused on translating this evidence into routine healthcare through personalised exercise testing and care pathways, including the establishment of the Cardiopulmonary Exercise and Lifestyle (CEL) Clinic. The broader goal is to make exercise a standard part of congenital heart disease care and improve exercise capacity, cardiovascular health, and quality of life.