Professor Alan Casson has resigned from the chair of Thoracic Surgery at Birmingham Heartlands Hospital from the end of July and is returning to Canada.
Geoffrey Tsang passed the Intercollegiate Fellowship.
Mike Lewis has obtained a British Heart Foundation Grant for two years. Tim Jones is going to the United States for a years research work.
Uday Dandekar, Javid Hyatt and Hementh Kaukuntla are all new VTN appointments on the West Midlands Rotation.
In April the Midlands Cardiothoracic Surgical Meeting was organised by Stephen Rooney. The West Midlands won the shield (again!) and Mr. Bill Brawn gave an expert review of surgery for hypoplastic left heart.
There has been a major reorganisation of cardiothoracic surgery in Bristol. Paediatric cardiac surgery is well established at the Bristol Children's Hospital under Ash Pawade with the expectation of a further appointment. The Thoracic Surgical Unit at Frenchay Hospital has transferred to the Bristol Royal Infirmary. The combined unit is now known as the Bristol Cardiothoracic Centre. In August, Mr. K. Jeyasingham retires after twenty-three years as a Thoracic Surgeon at Frenchay Hospital. He is well known as a member of the Executive of the Society and the Society's representative on the ODTS for many years. He will be replaced by Anthony Morgan current head of the department of Thoracic & Vascular Surgery at Clinicom in Frankfurt.
Abdul Deiraniya reports:
David Hopkinson goes to Toronto in January 1999 to spend a year in thoracic surgery and lung transplantation. The Young Cardiothoracic Surgeons will elect a temporary replacement for David who represents them on the Executive of the Society.
Ahmed El Gamel passed the Intercollegiate examination in May and will be credited by the end of the year. He was recently awarded a $25,000 research grant by the International Society of Heart & Lung Transplantation - the first time that this prestigious award has been made outside the USA.
Farah Bhatti was appointed to a Specialist Registrar post in August - the second female cardiothoracic trainee in the Manchester deanery.
The four cardiothoracic units in the North West have coordinated their audit data and risk stratification and hold regular meetings to review their results. Unit results and anonymised individual surgeon's results were presented with no statistically significant differences between the units and the overall average comparing favourably with the Cardiac Surgical Register data.
Frank wells reports:
Steven Tsui has been appointed as a consultant with an interest in t ransplantation at Papworth. Clifford Barlow has just returned from fourteen months intensive transplantation work and research at Stanford.
