BV, you're definitely wrong! Me - OASC 1998, heart murmur discovered by locum who told me there and then it was curtains for my flying ambitions, panic, allowed to complete part 2 of selection anyway, summoned by Gp Capt OASC before leaving for instant decision that I would be offered a pilot slot pending outcome of further medicals, referred to Peterborough, six weeks' anxious waiting (made considerably less stressful by thoughtful action of aforementioned gp capt), declared benign on the spot by cardiologist, many happy years of fast jet flying. Annual medicals have fallen fairly evenly into three categories - 1) doc has read the notes and mentions the murmur before examination; 2) doc surprised by hearing the murmur and referred by me to the notes; 3) doc doesn't mention it at all. Whether the latter meant they didn't hear it, or had read the notes and didn't mention it, I wouldn't know! But the bottom line is that it was not, and is not, a definite end to hopes of a military flying career until it has been assessed as such by a cardiologist.
While on the subject of heart complaints, there was an episode a few years ago at a remote northern station during which, over the course of several months, a not insignificant number of aircrew were grounded and sent for cardiological assessment after their routine ECGs uncovered the development of a potentially terminal (for flying, at any rate) heart condition. Each missed out on several weeks' flying before receiving a clean bill of health. No-one at the unnamed station seemed to think this at all odd. The cardiologist, however, started to wonder why he was seeing so many patients referred with this unusual condition who then presented with no symptoms whatsoever. On looking at the records of these individuals, he realised that they had all come from the same unnamed station, and on further investigation he realised that this one station had, in a few months, already referred more cases of the condition from within a previously well-screened group of aircrew than would be expected in one year in the entire UK population. A phone call to the SMO followed, and it was soon established that the station's ECG machine had been experiencing an insidious intermittent fault for months without (apparently) ever arousing suspicion among the medical staff. Whether or not this was due to the ineptitude of one particular nurse in using it was never revealed. Again the takeaway is not to put much stock in a GP's assessment of matters cardiological.
Last edited by Easy Street; 28th Apr 2016 at 02:21.