Ratcliff Interventional Oncology Fellowship
If you are interested in learning how to do ablation, you may wish to apply for The Ratcliff Interventional Oncology Fellowship. This training fellowship at UCH can be either full time or for 4 or 6 sessions weekly for a total period of 3 months up to a total of £20,000 per trainee.
The fellowships are open to both trainees and established consultants based in the UK. During the 3 month period fellows can expect to see/perform < 30 treatments in Liver, Lung or Kidney. Most treatments are performed percutaneously although we do collaborate with our surgeons for the occasional intra-operative ablation.
We have the latest treatments, guidance and monitoring technology including a 64 slice interventional CT and fluoroscopy, CT-US-fusion software, US contrast, microwave and multi-probe RFA. You would also be involved in treatment planning, assessment for suitability and follow up, including recognition of complications or recurrence. A good knowledge of the common cancers which are treated with RFA is essential.
We are looking to furnish doctors with sufficient knowledge and experience that they can set up an ablation service in their own right.
Our First Fellow
The Ratcliff Interventional Oncology Fellowship was first conceived in 2005/6 and following a period of active fundraising the first fellows were appointed towards the end of 2006.
Our very first fellow, Dr Simon Smith, is an established consultant at Ipswich General Hospital. Dr Smith had already acquired some funding and some equipment and the local oncology community were keen to have an ablation service. The aim of the fellowship was to provide the necessary knowledge and experience such that he could establish his own Ablation Service in Ipswich. As an established practitioner Dr Smith already had excellent needle placement skills but needed to learn about ablation. Over a period of 3 months he performed over 40 treatments. He has now returned to Ipswich and is in the process of establishing a local ablation service.
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The second Ratcliff Interventional Oncology fellow, Dr Mark Anderson, is a research registrar from Oxford. Dr Andersons’ main area of interest lies in colorectal cancer. Over a period of three months he learnt the “ins and outs” of ablation in the liver, lung and kidney, again performing several supervised procedures. Dr Anderson also carried out an analysis of the changing CT appearances that occur during lung ablation and showed that CT is excellent in predicting ablation efficacy. It is planned to present this work at scientific meetings and, in due course, it will be published. Dr Anderson now returns to Oxford where it is hoped to establish a regular weekly ablation treatment session.
Our current fellow is Dr Jeremy Taylor, a final year trainee from St George's Hospital. Dr Taylor has a long established interest in interventional oncology with a particular interest in liver tumours and liver ablation. He will spend three months at UCH learning the necessary skills to perform tumour ablation.
Looking forward to 2008, the adverts for the Ratcliff Interventional Oncology Fellowships have just been distributed. We have already received some expressions of interest and are looking forward to appointing the next fellow in early December.
The Middlesex Lung RFA Course
On Thursday, July 5th 2007, a one day course on "lung RFA" was held at the new University College Hospital in London. The course is officially named after The Middlesex Hospital where much of the pioneering work in tumour ablation was performed in the years before The Middlesex moved to UCH in 2005.
The one day symposium included lectures on the principles behind RFA, the technical details, how to assess a patients´ suitability, how to perform the procedure, and how to assess the efficacy of treatment. A sample treatment was carried out by Prof Lees and transmitted by live video feed to the adjacent conference room so that participants could experience for themselves how a typical lung ablation is performed.
In addition there were lecture sessions covering the main tumour types that are treated with RFA. Speakers included world leaders from surgery, oncology, radiotherapy and chest medicine each contributing the relevant knowledge from their own discipline. Interventional oncology lectures were provided by Dr Gillams from UCH and Dr Warner Prevoo from the Netherlands.
The course attracted practitioners and potential practitioners from across the UK, Europe and as far a field as the USA.
Building on the success of this one day symposium, we intend to hold further courses on liver and lung RFA in 2008/9.
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For further information please contact Dr Alice Gillams at a.gillams@medphys.ucl.ac.uk.