Kenneth Willoughby Heaton

Kenneth Willoughby Heaton (3 August 1936 – 4 March 2013) was a British physician who was an expert in intestinal diseases. He defined a set of criteria that could be used to diagnose irritable bowel syndrome based on a person's symptoms, and he developed the Bristol stool scale.

Life and career

Heaton was born in 1936 in Shillong, India, where his parents were Christian missionaries. His family later moved to England, where Heaton attended Marlborough College before completing a Bachelor of Arts at the University of Cambridge. He went on to study medicine at Cambridge, with clinical placements in London at Middlesex Hospital and Central Middlesex Hospital. He married Susan O'Connor, a fellow medical student, in 1961, the year they both graduated. With Steve Lewis, he developed the Bristol stool scale, an illustrated scale of faecal consistency that reflects intestinal transit time and can be used to assess bowel health and is used internationally by clinicians and researchers.