Dr Steve Walker is an NIHR Academic Clinical Lecturer and Specialist Registrar in Respiratory Medicine. His research interest is the management of pneumothorax, and he has published extensively on this. He has led several studies in the field, including the HISPEC trial on ambulatory management of pneumothoraces in patients with underlying lung diseases. 

He is leading on several upcoming studies in pneumothorax, including:

• CONservative versus Standard carE for primary spontaneous PneumoThorax (CONSEPT), which aims to evaluate whether conservative care for large symptomatic primary spontaneous pneumothoraces (PSPs) is superior to usual care.
• Pragmatic non-inferiority Randomised trial Investigating Needle aspiration versus ChEst drain (PRINCE), which aims to evaluate whether short term drainage with needle aspiration for symptomatic secondary spontaneous pneumothoraces (SSPs) is superior to usual care.
• Longitudinal Investigation of Secondary Pneumothorax (LISP), which is a multi-centre observational study on secondary spontaneous pneumothoraces.

He is also involved with the committed trial which aims to evaluate whether conservative care for traumatic pneumothoraces is superior to usual care.

He is leading the current the European Respiratory Society guideline on pneumothorax and collaborated on the 2022 British Thoracic Society Pleural Disease Guidelines.