St Mark’s Hospital is at the epicentre of the NHS Trust hit hardest by COVID-19. The fabric of St Mark’s diagnostics, evolving over decades to diagnose thousands of patients with bowel cancer was rocked by the virus. Within days, physicians and surgeons alike were manning COVID-19 wards. As the peak hit, the workforce had dispersed and many were sick. Day-to-day practice was frozen and patients feared coming to the Hospital. This webinar reflects on the experience of those on the front line with personal accounts of what happened to staff and patients and how teams responded. We also focus on our combined effort to re-establish testing of high risk patients with symptoms of colorectal cancer left undiagnosed in the community including a discussion on use of FIT. We warmly welcome Professor Perry Pickhardt, Professor of Radiology from Wisconsin, USA, to contribute his perspective and expertise of CT colonography, which may well provide an excellent support role as endoscopy volumes slowly recover.
We encourage all colleagues to watch the webinar and participate by comments and questions to the panel. We will tackle these questions as we go and seek your opinions on hot topics via simple polls. If you cannot join at the time of the webinar, the panel will aim to answer follow up questions in the week following the webinar.
CPD points applied for.
Dr Burling is a Consultant Radiologist and expert in bowel cancer and inflammatory bowel disease imaging. He is Program Director for the St Mark’s Virtual Colonoscopy program, which is internationally renowned for excellence in clinical practice and research.
Dr. Pickhardt’s work in abdominal imaging has resulted in over 400 scientific publications and book chapters, as well as multiple textbooks. In 2017, he also assumed the title of Medical Director of Oncologic Imaging for the UW Carbone Cancer Center.
Professor Brian Saunders is a specialist gastrointestinal endoscopist and luminal gastroenterologist. His main clinical interests are the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of intestinal diseases through flexible endoscopy.
Dr Ana Wilson is a luminal gastroenterologist and specialist gastrointestinal endoscopist. Her specialist interests include early diagnosis, prevention and treatment of pre-cancerous lesions and cancer, through colonoscopy, in patients with IBD and those at increased risk of developing colorectal cancer.
Dr Adam Humphries is a luminal gastroenterologist and specialist endoscopist. He is the clinical lead for endoscopy and his specialist interests include diagnostic and therapeutic endoscopy, bowel cancer screening endoscopy, video capsule endoscopy, double-balloon enteroscopy and inflammatory bowel disease.
Mr Jenkins was appointed as Consultant Surgeon to St Mark’s Hospital in 2008 following training in Coloproctology/ Surgical Oncology in the West of Scotland and St Mark’s Hospital.
Ms Burns is a Consultant Colorectal Surgeon at St Marks Hospital and Honorary Senior Lecturer at Imperial College London. Her area of clinical interest is colorectal surgery and in particular the surgical management of primary and recurrent colorectal cancer.