About our general surgery service

Our General Surgery department encompasses emergency care, inpatient/outpatient care and day surgical practice. A team of twelve general surgeons provide elective and emergency surgery on an on-call rota basis. The department has a strong capability in minimally invasive (keyhole) surgery, both for emergency and elective procedures.

Our excellent team of Consultants are supported by middle-grade and junior medical staff, clinical nurse specialists, emergency pathway co-ordinators and an enhanced recovery nurse. The department offers surgical, laparoscopic, endoscopic and outpatient treatments.  We offer enhanced recovery across all specialities. 

We are proud to be a large speciality containing many sub-specialities including: General and Emergency, ENT, Upper GI surgery 

Our five Emergency Surgery Consultant Surgeons are dedicated and experienced in a broad area of emergency surgery, while they maintain interest in General Surgery, Upper GI, Lower GI, Breast Surgery and surgery in children.

Emergency surgery runs as a Consultant led 24/ 24h service in a dedicated area near the ED department, with fast track of patients from the main ED. We have the support of a very busy emergency theatre, HDU and ITU and anaesthetic team as well as all urgent investigations such as ultrasound, CT, MRI scan, etc as well as other specialists input as required.

Our service runs a 7 days outstanding service for any abdominal surgical emergencies including a successful and highly specialised emergency laparoscopic cholecystectomy for acute cholecystitis and gallstones pancreatitis, general emergency surgery in children as well as specialised emergency surgical diagnoses for surgery or allied specialities (diagnostic laparoscopy, all urgent biopsies, etc)

Conditions we treat

General surgery

  • All abdominal hernias
  • Gallstones, pancreatitis
  • Complex abdominal wall hernia
  • Feeding stoma insertion (combined with Endoscopy service)
  • All benign perianal conditions
  • Skin and subcutaneous lesions - lipoma, cysts, pilonidal disease, other miscellanea

Emergency surgery

  • Acute cholecystitis and gallstones pancreatitis (laparoscopic)
  • Appendicitis in adults and children (open and laparoscopic)
  • Diagnostic laparoscopy
  • Abdominal traumatic / non traumatic bleeding
  • Gastric, duodenal and bowel perforation surgery (open and laparoscopic)
  • Small bowel obstruction (open and laparoscopic)
  • Complicated diverticular disease (obstruction, perforation, bleeding)
  • Complicated (bleeding, perforated, obstructed) bowel cancer (open)
  • Complicated (incarcerated, strangulated, etc) abdominal hernia (open)
  • All Abscesses urgent surgical treatment
  • Urgent abdominal lymph node biopsy, peripheral lymph node biopsy, temporal artery biopsy
  • Other trauma and conservative emergency surgical conditions treatments

How to prepare for your visit

If your surgery is planned

Elective pathways: comprehensive outpatient appointment, both remote and face to face, followed by all outpatient or inpatient investigations and pre anaesthetic appointment. Admission as elective day surgery or inpatient surgery. Depending on the conditions, this may be followed postoperatively in the community by the general practitioners or by our specialists in the hospital.

If your surgery is unplanned or an emergency

Emergency pathways: comprehensive and multidisciplinary inpatient assessment and investigations, followed by inpatient urgent surgery and postop or by elective pathway as needed. Postoperatively the follow up in the general practice setting or with the hospital’s specialists, depending on the conditions.

Meet our team

Emergency and General Surgical Team

  • Miss Laura Spanu, Clinical Lead for General Surgery and Consultant General Surgeon
  • Mr Manojkumar Nair, Emergency and Consultant General Surgeon
  • Mr Abeywardana Abeysekara, Locum Consultant Emergency and Breast Surgeon
  • Mr Venu Kalidini, Locum Consultant Emergency and General Surgeon
  • Miss Alessandra Ferro, Locum Consultant Emergency and General Surgeon
  • Mr Jose Vaz, Locum Consultant Emergency, General and Colorectal Surgeon
  • Mrs Fola Babusola, Emergency Surgical Nurse Practitioner

Refer a patient

The trust actively encourages GPs to make hospital appointments via the E-Referral system (eRS), formerly known as Choose and Book. This is because:

  • It provides an immediate appointment to the patient by the time they walk out of their appointment.  There is less chance of referrals going missing as it is a paperless system.  It provides greater convenience to patients so that they can choose when their appointment takes place. Providing this choice reduces the chance of DNAs in hospital.

We are pleased to announce that our online Directory of Services has recently been updated so it should be easier than ever to book a patient into one of our outpatient clinics online.

GPs can make appointments via E-Referral during their consultation. 

Should a convenient appointment slot not be available, please note that the trust automatically receives a list of all patients that require booking on a daily basis. The trust has a dedicated team to ensure that these patients are booked in for their hospital appointment as soon as possible. 

Our referral centre team is more than happy to resolve any immediate issues you might have with E-Referral and work together to make the system more convenient for you. They can be contacted via email northmid.centralappointments@nhs.net.

Where to find us

Outpatients

  • Colorectal, General Surgery and Upper GI outpatient Services are based in Clinic 6 - Level 1.

Emergency

  • Surgical Assessment Unit (SAU) and Emergency Surgical Ambulatory Care (ESAC) are based in Podium 1 - Level 0.