Great Ormond Street Hospital recognised in The Times “Top Surgeons” list

Posted by: Great Ormond Street Hospital Children's Charity
12th December, 2011

Two Great Ormond Street Hospital surgeons said they were “delighted and honoured” to be recognised for their outstanding achievements in a Times article this weekend.

The issue’s “Top Surgeons” article highlighted ‘some of the brightest and most respected names from the 19,500 surgeons and surgical trainees in the UK’. Five surgeons from Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) were included in total.

Conjoined twins success

Mr David Dunaway, consultant craniofacial surgeon, and Mr Owase Jeelani, consultant neurosurgeon (pictured) led the medical team which earlier this year separated conjoined twins Rital and Ritag Gaboura.

Mr Dunaway and Mr Jeelani said: “We worked as part of a much larger multidisciplinary team to separate the twins, and we would also like to take this opportunity to recognise and thank our highly skilled colleagues without whom such a successful outcome for Rital and Ritag would not have been possible.”

Rital and Ritag, who were born joined at the head, were separated on 15 August after four operations at Great Ormond Street Hospital. Conjoined twins are very rare, and only 5 per cent of conjoined twins are craniopagus or ‘fused at the head’.

Also recognised at Great Ormond Street Hospital

Mr Ben Hartley, consultant paediatric otolaryngologist at GOSH, also featured in The Times list. He specialises in complex head and neck tumours in children, malformations and airway surgery. He has developed many surgical procedures in this area, particularly for cystic hygromas (birth defects that cause a mass to grow in the head and neck area) and vascular malformation.

Two other Great Ormond Street Hospital surgeons were recognised for their contributions to paediatric surgery: Professor Martin Elliott, chief of cardiothoracic surgery, established and leads the national service for severe tracheal disease in children and helped to establish paediatric heart and lung transplantation at GOSH. He recently pioneered the world’s first stem-cell supported tracheal transplantation in a child and this year performed a lung transplant on the smallest UK recipient.

Martin’s colleague, Mr Victor Tsang, the chief of paediatric cardiothoracic surgery at GOSH, was also recognised. Having worked at GOSH since 1997, he’s also a consultant cardiothoracic surgeon at the Heart Hospital, with specialisms in adult congenital heart surgery and neonatal cardiac surgery.

Superb team work

Dr Jane Collins, chief executive, Great Ormond Street Hospital said: “I was really pleased to see so many of our surgeons featured in The Times Magazine this weekend.

“Individually they are certainly world class experts in their fields, but essentially it is their superb team work alongside the many other highly skilled staff at the hospital which makes their surgical work so successful.”