Professor J Meirion Thomas is a Consultant Surgeon at the Royal Marsden Hospital London and holds a Chair in Surgical Oncology at Imperial College.
Currently, he is Lead Surgeon and senior surgeon on the Sarcoma and Melanoma Unit at The Royal Marsden Hospital. During his 26 years as a Consultant Surgeon, he has worked in most branches of surgical oncology but for the past decade has focused, almost exclusively, on the treatment of soft tissue sarcoma and malignant melanoma.
He recently launched a new website offering melanoma patients and health professionals concise summaries of the latest best practice evidence from research literature.
Soft Tissue Sarcoma
The Soft Tissue Sarcoma Unit at The Royal Marsden Hospital. is the largest in Europe and one of the largest in the World. Currently more than 600 new patients are referred annually, the majority for consideration of surgical treatment. Working with colleagues within the Multi-Disciplinary Team, Professor Thomas has published extensively on this subject including a prestigious review article in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2005.
Malignant Melanoma
The Unit is also referred more than 200 new cases of malignant melanoma annually, mostly for the treatment of advanced disease. The Royal Marsden Hospital. is the only centre in the UK which offers isolated limb perfusion with Melphalan and tumour necrosis factor alpha. Professor Thomas and his team were the first to describe the use of carbon-dioxide laser vaporisation in the treatment of in-transit melanoma.
Research & Development
A large number of patients are also referred for treatment of primary cutaneous melanoma and over the past decade, Professor Thomas has emerged as one of the most prominent opponents of the sentinel lymph node biopsy procedure as currently practiced. He has argued in many publications that the procedure represents excessive and unnecessary surgery for most patients and that the procedure fails to offer any survival advantage for any legitimate subgroup of patients. The alternative treatment offered at the Royal Marsden Hospital is screening and regular surveillance of the lymph node basin by high-resolution ultrasound.
News
June 2009 Inaugural lecture chaired by Professor Darzi at The Royal Marsden Hospital to a packed Julian Bloom Lecture Theatre.
May 2009 Meirion lectures about prognostic false positivity of the sentinel node biopsy procedure at The 7th World Melanoma Congress in Vienna, Austria.
December 2008 Meirion hits world news after giving advice to David Nott, a British surgeon working in The Congo by SMS message which instructed him how to perform a lifesaving forequarter amputation on a 16-year old boy.
Resources
Suggested reading
- Sentinel Node Biopsy in Melanoma does not offer a survival advantage
- Ultrasound is the alternative to sentinel node biopsy
Contact Details
Prof. Meirion Thomas,The Royal Marsden Hospital,
Fulham Road, London, SW3 6JJ