Dr Fletcher is a respiratory, general medicine and intensive care medicine consultant with a sub-specialty interest in respiratory critical care and interstitial lung disease.

BA BM BCh MRCP PG Cert (Med Ed)

Training and education

BA medical science tripos - Queens’ College, Cambridge University, 1995
BM BCh - Magdalen College, Oxford University, 2001
Postgraduate training - St Thomas’ Hospital London and The Royal Brompton London, 2004
Higher specialist training in respiratory, general and intensive care - Wessex deanery, 2012

Experience

Dr Fletcher is an established clinical consultant working within the field of ILD (interstitial lung disease) and has represented UHS nationally and internationally as a recognised leader in the field. Dr Fletcher believes that research should be integral to clinical care and has offered research opportunities to her patients since she was appointed as a clinical consultant in 2012 and has been able to present therapeutic options to those that otherwise would have none.

Her clinical experience has not only facilitated involvement with research trial delivery but also enabled participation in trial design to ensure clinical relevance.

Dr Fletcher is the current Chair of the Interstitial and Rare Lung Disease Specialist Advisory Group for the British Thoracic Society (BTS) and provides expert advice to guide the content of the national scientific symposium. She is a current member of the National ILD Research Strategy Group, part of the Respiratory Translational Research Collaboration.

She works closely with colleagues in research based at the University of Southampton and the NIHR Respiratory Biomedical Research Unit (BRU) and was elected as Honorary Associate Professor by the University of Southampton in 2024.

Dr Fletcher was the clinical lead for the respiratory department at UHS since 2018 and throughout the COVID-19 global pandemic.

Dr Fletcher was worked with the British Lung Foundation, the biomedical research unit, the University of Southampton and Portsmouth hospital to set up a patient support group for those in Wessex with ILD – WILD, www.wildsupport.co.uk.

Awards and prizes

Winner of the national BTS/NIHR CRN award: Principal Investigator (PI) or Chief Investigator (CI) making an outstanding contribution in design, conduct and dissemination of NIHR portfolio studies, and building research capacity 2023.
Winner of the national BTS/NIHR CRN award: Research Team making an outstanding contribution to the NIHR portfolio studies in 2022-2023. This team was led by Dr Fletcher.

Research

Rituximab compared to intravenous Cyclophosphamide in Connective Tissue Disease associated Interstitial Lung Disease (RECITAL): a randomised controlled clinical trial.
Toby M Maher PhD, Veronica Tudor PhD, Peter Saunders PhD, Michael A Gibbons PhD, Sophie V Fletcher MD, Christopher P Denton PhD, Rachel K Hoyles PhD, Helen Parfrey PhD, Elisabetta A Renzoni PhD, Maria Kokosi MD, Athol U Wells MD, Deborah Ashby PhD, Matyas Sziget PhD, Philip L Molyneaux PhD; on behalf of the RECITAL investigators. Lancet Respiratory Medicine. Published online November 11, 2022 https://doi.org/10.1016/S2213-2600(22)00359-9
Luca Richeldi, Sophie Fletcher, Huzaifa Adamali, Nazia Chaudhuri, Sabrina Wieb, Sven Wind, Kathrin Hohl, Andrew Baker, Rozsa Schlenker-Herceg, Susanne Stowasser, Toby M. Maher. No relevant pharmacokinetic drug-drug interaction between nintedanib and pirfenidone. Eur Respir J 2019.
Giacomo Sgalla; Simon Walsh; Nicola Sverzellati; Sophie Fletcher; Stefania Cerri; Borislav Dimitrov; Dragana Nikolic; Anna Barney; Fabrizio Luppi; Mark Jones; Donna Davies; Luca Richeldi. "Velcro-type" crackles predict specific radiologic features of fibrotic interstitial lung disease BMC Pulmonary Medicine 2018;18:103
Fletcher S, Jones MG, Spinks K, Sgalla G, Marshall BG, Limbrey R, Richeldi L. The safety of new drug treatments for Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis. Expert Opinion Drug Safety 2016; 15:1483-1489.

Dr Fletcher's main research interests are idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) and interstitial lung disease, as well as critical care medicine and non-invasive ventilation.

For further details on Dr Fletcher's research please visit, Sophie Fletcher (nihr.ac.uk) and Sophie Fletcher (0000-0002-5633-905X) - ORCID.

Contact

You can contact Dr Fletcher via her secretary Hayley King - call 023 8120 6228 or send an email.