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Location: Health Sciences Building, South East Technological University, Cork Road, Waterford
This year the Waterford Surgical October Meeting(WSOM) will take place on Saturday, 14 October 2023.
Please bring proof of registration with you on the day of the meeting.
Theme
The theme for this year’s meeting is “Surgery in the Co-morbid Patient”. The meeting will also include our Orthopaedic Colleagues who will have a specific research prize session and guest speaker.
Gordon Watson Lecture
This year’s “Gordon Watson Lecture” will be delivered by Professor P. Ronan O’Connell, Emeritus Professor of Surgery, Honorary Consultant Surgeon, St Vincent's University Hospital.
William O'Keeffe Lecture
Dr. Carolyn Cullinane, Department of Surgery, Mercy University Hospital, Cork will deliver the “William O’Keeffe” Lecture and the meeting will include a research section for the “William O’Keeffe” Memorial Prize which will be awarded for the best original paper.
Abstracts for research session
Submission of abstracts for the research session has now closed. There will also be an Orthopaedic Research Prize.
Brendan Devlin Prize
The “Brendan Devlin” prize will be awarded for the best case presented as a mini-poster in keeping with our theme of “Surgical Practice in the Subspecialist Era”. There will also be prizes for the best full size general surgery poster and for the best full size orthopaedic poster on a wide spectrum of General Surgery and Orthopaedic issues. Entry for these competitions is now closed.
Professor P. Ronan O’Connell, Emeritus Professor of Surgery, Honorary Consultant Surgeon,
St Vincent's University Hospital
Biography
P. Ronan O’Connell is the immediate past-President of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, and Emeritus Professor of Surgery at University College Dublin. He retired as Consultant General and Colorectal Surgeon at St Vincent’s University Hospital in June 2019. He previously was Head of the Section of Surgery and Surgical Sciences at University College Dublin from 2007-2017 and consultant surgeon at the Mater Misericordiae University Hospital Dublin from 1990-2007.
Prof O’Connell graduated from Dublin University in 1979, trained in Dublin and Cork and completed specialist training in Colon and Rectal Surgery at the Mayo Clinic, Minnesota, USA. He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (1983) and holds honorary Fellowships of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow (2001), the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh (2015), the Royal College of Surgeons of England (2019), the College of Surgeons of Hong Kong (2019) and the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada (2023).
Prof O’Connell is an honorary fellow of the American Society of Colon and Rectal Surgeons (2015), past president (2013) and honorary member (2019) of the European Society of Coloproctology, elected member of the Society of Pelvic Surgeons and the International Surgical Group. He is an honorary fellow of the American Surgical Association (2015) and is an elected member and immediate past-President of the European Surgical Association. In 2022 he became the first international honorary member of the Japanese Society of Coloproctology.
Prof O’Connell has published widely in the areas of inflammatory bowel disease, pelvic floor physiology and colorectal cancer. He has been associate editor (1999-2002) and editor (2002-6) of the British Journal of Surgery, joint editor of Bailey and Love’s Short Practice of Surgery (25th, 26th, 27th and 28th editions), Operative Surgery of the Colon, Rectum and Anus (6th edition) and the European Manual in Coloproctology (2008 and 2017 editions). In 2019, he had the distinction of delivering the biennial Hunterian Oration at the Royal College of Surgeons of England.
Dr Carolyn Cullinane
Dr Carolyn Cullinane,
Department of Surgery, Mercy University Hospital, Cork
Biography
Dr Carolyn Cullinane graduated from Norwich Medical School, University of East Anglia in 2015 (first decile) and was awarded the Dean's Prize for highest performance in clinical finals. She completed foundation year training in Northern Ireland before commencing Core Surgical Training in Ireland. Her post-graduate achievements include a MCh in Surgery from UCC in 2020 and MSc in Healthcare Leadership from UCC in May 2023.
Dr Cullinane embarked on full-time laboratory research in 2021 and is currently finishing the final chapter of her MD thesis in UCC. She joined the Irish Surgical Research Collaborative in 2020 to enhance collaboration and boost translational research amongst surgical trainees. Following involvement in the National Laparotomy Audit (NELA) and as national lead for the CovidSurg collaborative project, Dr Cullinane was elected as Quality Improvement lead for the ISRC. She is currently working as a General Surgical SpR with Hepatobiliary in the Mercy University Hospital in Cork.
Professor Ezzat Elhassadi
Professor Ezzat Elhassadi,
Consultant Haematologist, Clinical Director & NCCP lead for Haematology Services, Clinical Associate Professor (RCSI) & Senior Clinical lecturer (UCC),
University Hospital Waterford
Biography
Professor Elhassadi is a consultant haematologist, with a clinical director role for haematology and transfusion services at University Hospital Waterford. A graduated from the Al-Arab Medical University Benghazi-Libya 1993, he completed his Specialist Training in Haematology in Ireland (2010). He obtained his Master degree in Haematology at National University of Ireland. Galway, Ireland (2004). His MD research was on TP53 mutation and chronic lymphocytic leukaemia at Trinity College Dublin (2017). He is an active member of ASH, EHA and EMCL network, in addition he is recently nominated as Ireland SOHO Ambassador, an international haematology educational programme led by MD Anderson-USA. He has a clinical interest in malignant haematology and Thrombotic disorders with an academic interest in translational research and clinical trials.
Dr Edel Duggan
Dr Edel Duggan,
Consultant Anaesthetist, Beaumont Hospital
Biography
Dr Edel Duggan is a Consultant Anaesthesiologist and Clinical Director of the National Poisons Information Centre in Beaumont Hospital. After graduating from NUI, Galway, she trained in Anaesthesia and Intensive Care Medicine and completed specialist training in 2006. During her training, she received an MD based on systemic inflammation after cardiac surgery from Trinity College Dublin. Having completed fellowship training in Regional Anaesthesia and Cardiothoracic Anaesthesia in Toronto and London respectively, she was appointed to Beaumont Hospital in 2009. She received a Diploma in Toxicology (placed 1st) from Cardiff University in 2011. She is an examiner for the College of Anaesthesiology membership exams and a reviewer for the European Journal of Clinical Pharmacology. She has published in numerous scientific journals and has presented at both national and international conferences.
Her current areas of interest include preoperative assessment, toxicology, and airway management. She is a co-founder of the Airway Anaesthesia Fellowship programme in Beaumont Hospital which is currently in its 6th year. She provides a preoperative assessment clinic for complex surgical patients. She is a member of the Preoperative Anaesthesia Clinic improvement group. The objective of the group is to streamline the preoperative assessment service, avoid overprocessing of patients and decrease day of surgery cancellations in Beaumont Hospital. She is currently involved in developing a Rapid ENT Preassessment pathway for patients undergoing major head and neck cancer surgery.
Professor Francis Finucane
Professor Francis Finucane,
Consultant Endocrinologist, Galway University Hospitals and University of Galway
Biography
Francis Finucane is a consultant endocrinologist at Galway University Hospitals and an honorary personal professor in medicine at NUI Galway. He graduated from RCSI in 1998 and completed training in general medicine and endocrinology at the Mater and Beaumont Hospitals in Dublin.
He undertook a clinical research fellowship at St. James’s Hospital for which he was awarded an MD in 2008 by the University of Dublin (TCD). This work investigated cardiovascular and metabolic perturbations in Irish children with obesity as well as the response to exercise in young patients with type 2 diabetes. Specifically, he described for the first time in Irish children the association between excess body weight and elevated blood pressure and also insulin resistance.
Thereafter, Prof. Finucane won both the Graves'- and the Bristol Myers Squibb/ Sanofi- Travelling Fellowships from the Irish Endocrine Society in 2006, which funded the start of a post-doctoral fellowship at the MRC Epidemiology Unit in Cambridge, UK. This led to a three-year MRC-funded Career Development Fellowship there, where he led the first trial to show that aerobic exercise reduces liver fat content in humans. He also contributed to genetic epidemiological studies that identified mechanistically important diabetes risk markers and he devised a new method for measuring whole-body insulin sensitivity.
Since returning to Ireland in 2010, Prof. Finucane has established a regional bariatric service in the West of Ireland, the busiest centre in the country providing multidisciplinary care to patients with severe and complicated obesity. He was the clinical lead for endocrinology in the Saolta group from 2014 to 2018. He is a member of several international scientific organisations and is on the scientific committee of the European Diabetes Epidemiology Group since 2016. He has over 60 peer reviewed publications.
As of January 2020 (according to Publons) he is the highest ranked peer reviewer across all academic disciplines at University of Galway and is the highest ranked peer reviewer in clinical medicine in Ireland. He sits on the editorial board of the journal Obesity Surgery. He has served on RCPI policy groups on obesity and physical activity and on the RCPI examinations board and is currently a junior fellow on Council at RCPI.
He was awarded the inaugural Clinical Research Career Development Fellowship from the Saolta Hospital Group in 2019. He is currently establishing Ireland's first and only Masters of Science in Obesity in collaboration with his colleagues at NUI Galway.
Consultant Paediatric Orthopaedic Surgeon, Temple Street Children’s University Hospital and the National Orthopaedic Cappagh
Ms Aoife Hearne
Ms Aoife Hearne,
Assistant Lecturer in Nutrition & Exercise Science, Department of Sports & Science, South East Technological University, Waterford
Biography
Aoife is a CORU Registered Dietitian with MSc in Sports & Exercise Nutrition. She started her career in the United States where she went on an athletic scholarship to study nutrition at The University of Tennessee. She went on to complete a dietetic internship at Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston. After qualifying as a Registered Dietitian, she worked as a Clinical Dietitian in Savannah, Georgia at Memorial Health University Medical Centre. In 2005, she returned home and established Nutrition Solutions, a private nutrition consultancy service located in Waterford City. In addition to her clinical experience Aoife has worked with many elite athletes from a number of different sports including the Tipperary Senior Hurling panel from 2009-2018 and Waterford Senior Camogie panel 2022 / 2023.
Aoife is well known for her role as the leading nutrition expert on RTÉ One’s Operation Transformation from 2014-2022. Aoife contributes to 'FeelGood" in The Irish Examiner where she looks at a different aspects of childhood nutrition.
Aoife joined the Department of Sports & Exercise Science at SETU in 2021 teaching on the Nutrition & Exercise Science degree programme.
Aoife lives in Waterford with her husband & 3 children.
Ms Naomi Fearon
Ms Naomi Fearon,
Consultant in General Surgery / Upper Gastrointestinal, St. Vincent's University Hospital
Biography
Naomi is a UCD graduate and completed her General and Upper gastrointestinal surgery training in Ireland under the remit of the RCSI training scheme. During her training she was awarded an MD by UCD. She subsequently completed an RCS England accredited Bariatric surgery fellowship in Bristol, UK before being appointed as a consultant surgeon in St Vincent’s University Hospital in 2022. Naomi's interests include peri-operative care of patients with obesity, optimisation of surgical outcomes and medical education.
Mr Michael Sugrue
Mr. Michael Sugrue,
Consultant Surgeon, Letterkenny University Hospital and University Hospital Galway
Michael qualified 1981 from University College Galway Ireland, with many undergraduate awards. After 8 years of training in Ireland he went to Australia and during his 20 years at Liverpool Hospital in Sydney, where he was academic Professor of Surgery at University of New South Wales, Trauma Director at Liverpool Hospital he obtained his MD in 2002 for his work on Intra-abdominal Pressure and Renal Failure, on which he has published widely.
He is cofounder and ex-president of World Society Abdominal Compartment Syndrome and was convener of the 2nd and 4th World Congress on the Abdominal Compartment Syndrome. He has achieved many awards for pursuit of educational initiatives included the ESR Hughes Medal from Australasian College of Surgeons in 2008. He enjoys patients and is a very hands-on working surgery. He has a keen interest in technical aspects of surgery and patient outcomes. He has published some 300 papers, over 10000 citations and H factor of> 40.
Michael is currently Emergency and Breast Surgeon in Letterkenny Hospital and Galway University Hospital Ireland. He has developed many courses in Emergency Surgery, including EASC and student EASC and Difficult Open Abdomen. The EASC course is now one of the world’s most popular Emergency Abdominal Surgery Course and taught in 10 countries. www.easccourse.com and he is delighted return to Waterford the place of his birth.
Michael received the Orazio Campione Prize for services to Emergency Surgery in 2019. He was the recipient of a 8.4 million EU grant to evaluate emergency surgery. He has a passion for innovation and digital solutions to human challenges in medicine.
Michael is a keen photographer and his imagery is featured on ♯wild_atlantic_photographer. He tries to write poetry and enjoys a slow cycle between coffees with Pauline. His coffee table book, a collection of poetry and photography, Donegal’s Atlantic Way 2019, was joined by his second photographic book Hidden Donegal in December 2022 .
