Professional Profile
Alastair graduated from Nottingham University Medical School in 2002 and completed his early surgical training in the East Midlands, obtaining a PhD in Colorectal Surgery in 2015. He went on to complete a distinguished Fellowship at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Melbourne, Australia in 2016. It was here that he specialised in robotic surgery and advanced cancer surgery.
Alastair is the lead robotic surgeon at Nottingham University Hospitals. He is also the lead surgeon for advanced colorectal cancer and specialises in complex surgery for patients suffering from sarcoma (a rare tumour affecting connective tissue).
In his role as East Midlands Clinical Director for cancer, Alastair is responsible for leading innovations in cancer work and improving outcomes for patients.
Alastair is widely published across a range of specialist areas related to surgery, as evidenced by his bibliography below. He currently supervises PhD students at Nottingham University and is the Principal Investigator for clinical trials.
Alastair is also clinical director for the Royal College of Surgeons of England, Speciality Skills in Emergency and Trauma Surgery. This is a national initiative aimed at training future surgeons in the skills required to become an expert surgeon.
Alastair appeared on the BBC’s ‘Hospital’ programme in 2018 when
he treated a patient with an abdominal sarcoma which had previously been
thought to be inoperable.
Alastair is married with two children and spends his free time coaching children’s rugby at the local club.
Bibliography (limited to five publications)
· Ng O, Keeler BD, Mishra A, Simpson JA, Neal K, Al-Hassi HO, Brookes MJ, Acheson AG. Iron therapy for preoperative anaemia. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2019 Dec 7;12(12)
· Peacock O, Waters PS, Otero de Pablos J, Boussioutas A, Skandarajah A, Simpson JA, Warrier SK, Heriot AG. A systematic review of risk-reducing cancer surgery outcomes for hereditary cancer syndromes. Eur J Surg Oncol. 2019 Dec;45(12):2241-2250.
·
Keeler BD, Simpson
JA, Ng O, Padmanabhan H, Brookes MJ, Acheson AG; IVICA Trial Group. Randomized clinical trial of preoperative
oral versus intravenous iron in anaemic patients with colorectal cancer. Br
J Surg. 2017 Feb;104(3):214-221.
· Simpson JA, Banerjea A, Scholefield JH. Management of anal fistula. BMJ. 2012 Oct 15;345.
· Simpson JA, Scholefield JH. Diagnosis and management of anal intraepithelial neoplasia and anal cancer. BMJ. 2011 Nov 4;343.
· Simpson JA, Al-Attar A, Watson NF, Scholefield JH, Ilyas M, Durrant LG. Intratumoral T cell infiltration, MHC class I and STAT1 as biomarkers of good prognosis in colorectal cancer. Gut. 2010 Jul;59(7):926-33.
