Future Orthopaedic Surgeons Conference: An interactive webinar for medical students and junior trainees, Episode 1

Rajarshi (Raj) Bhattacharya is a Consultant Trauma and Orthopaedic Surgeon and Clinical Director of Orthopaedics, Plastics and Major Trauma at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust and North West London Major Trauma Centre. He is currently in his 2^nd term as President of the Orthopaedic Section of the Royal Society of Medicine, London and acts as an Advisor to the Parliament and Health Ombudsman of UK. His main areas of interest include all aspects of knee surgery including robotic assisted knee replacements and trauma.

M Bhattacharya is a Fellow of the Austria, Swiss & German Orthopaedic Association, Honorary Clinical Senior Lecturer at Imperial College and UK Faculty for American College of Surgeons (ACS)-UK Acute Care Emergency Surgery & Trauma Program. He is also the GIRFT Lead for Orthopaedics in North-West London and was previously a member of the PLAB Committee of the GMC, the Medical Managers Committee for BMA and Major Trauma Centre Peer Reviewer. He completed his MBA with Distinction from Imperial College Business School and currently enjoys a portfolio career, acting as Non-Executive Director in multiple organisations and sitting on the Boards of various start-up companies.

Professor Timothy William Roy Briggs, CBE FRCS is an orthopaedic surgeon at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital NHS Trust (RNOH), chairman of the Federation of Specialist Hospitals and a former president of the British Orthopaedic Association.

Briggs was appointed a consultant orthopaedic surgeon at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital in 1992. He was medical director at the RNOH for 15 years. He is chairman of the Federation of Specialist Hospitals and a former president of the British Orthopaedic Association.

He was appointed National Director for Clinical Quality and Efficiency by Jeremy Hunt in October 2015. When appointed he said that surgical patients were at risk of infections because beds were not “ring-fenced” for those undergoing the same types of procedures. There was a 25-fold variation in infection rates for the same procedure in different hospitals. He had visited 211 hospitals and seen unwanted variation in practice. He thought that some consultants carrying out too few procedures to become sufficiently skilled, and in some places junior staff were given too much responsibility. His report on hip replacement concluded that at least 35 operations a year were needed before a surgeon could produce acceptable results.

Michael Pearse received initial orthopaedic training in Exeter before being appointed ARC Clinical Fellow at Bristol University under Professor Louis performing clinical research into osteoarthritis and osteonecrosis of the hip joint.  He later become a Senior Registrar in The West of England and in 1994 he was appointed Senior Lecturer and consultant orthopaedic surgeon at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School.  Mr Pearse gained specialist orthopaedic experience as Associate Professor in orthopaedic trauma and limb reconstruction at Hermann Hospital, Houston, Texas in 1995.  He became clinical senior lecturer at Imperial College in 2003 and he is head of orthopaedic trauma at Imperial NHS Trust.

Knee surgeon at Fortius Clinic, London; Reader at Imperial College London; and Honorary Senior Research Fellow, Nuffield Department of Orthopaedics, Rheumatology, and Musculoskeletal Sciences, University of Oxford.  He qualified from King’s College Hospital, London in 1987. Orthopaedic training at The Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital, Stanmore, and a year’s Fellowship in Brisbane, Australia with Peters Myers and McMeniman. This is where his experience with sports-related surgery began. On return to the UK in 1997 he became Senior Lecturer / Honorary Consultant at The Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital, Stanmore.

Elective practice is exclusively knee surgery. Approximately 90% is soft tissue knee surgery, and he undertakes around 100 ACL reconstructions per year, of which half are on professional athletes, and a multi-ligament reconstruction every 2 weeks. This latter work represents one of the World’s largest experiences. He has been the primary knee surgeon for many of the UK’s professional sports teams, including 75% English Premier League Football teams, and 80% English Premiership rugby for many years. 50% of his patients are professional sportsmen and women, and 50% of all his operative cases are on professional athletes. He is a founder and board member of Fortius Clinic in central London.

He has published over 110 peer-reviewed articles. His study of knee motion employing weight-bearing, ‘dynamic’ MRI has fundamentally changed thinking in the field.  For this he was awarded The Hunterian Professorship by The Royal College of Surgeons of England for 2005-2006. Current research interests are in the fields of inflammatory response to knee injury, and biomechanics at Imperial College, London, where an anatomical study of the lateral soft tissue restraints aiding the ACL was awarded the Trillat Prize at ISAKOS 2015. Current work there focuses on the medial ligament complex. He was a lead editor of the 39^th Edition of Gray’s Anatomy published in December 2004. He was on the executive of The British Association for Surgery of The Knee. He sat on the Editorial Board of the Bone and Joint Journal and the ESSKA Sports Committee.  In 2002 he was awarded the ABC Travelling Fellowship. He was named in the UK’s Top 100 Doctors by the Times newspaper in 2011. He is the first UK member of The Herodicus Society.

Alex is Clinical Senior Lecturer in Orthopaedic Surgery at the MSK Lab, based at the Sir Michael Uren Hub on the White City Campus, and Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon at St Mary's and Charing Cross Hospitals. His principal research interest is in the improvement of joint replacement surgery through the use of big data and new technologies. In particular, he is interested in technological approaches to the prevention and management of infection following joint replacement, and in the improvement of outcomes of partial knee replacement.