Fellow

Gus McGrouther was appointed a Consultant at age 32 and has held four busy clinical posts, with a continuous output of basic science research. He was appointed to the UK’s first Chair of Plastic Surgery at University College London (1999 – 2001) and subsequently recruited to Manchester, where he has developed a large laboratory group investigating fields of wound healing relevant to reconstructive surgery. His research interests are focussed around healing and injury, particularly the influence of mechanical forces on wound healing and how they are transduced cellularly, aspects of tendon injury and repair, and investigations of Dupuytren’s disease from mechanical, cellular and clinical aspects. Additionally, he has been and is currently involved in pioneering clinical trials involving new pharmaceuticals to prevent scarring or tissue engineered constructs to facilitate nerve repair. He has been instrumental in facilitating the translation of a number of basic science research projects to clinical application. He has collaborated widely and is often the key facilitator between basic science and clinical applications. This can be demonstrated by his recruitment in Manchester of Professor Giorgio Terenghi and the Blond McIndoe Laboratory group and Professor David Tomlinson’s Neuropathology group, to form the largest peripheral nerve study group in Europe. Professor McGrouther has also been instrumental in developing novel teaching aids, such as three dimensional dissections and reconstructions of the hand. He personally founded annual anatomy courses on hand surgery, flap dissection, basic surgical technique, initiated the Masters in Surgical Sciences at UCL and delivered more than 500 lectures at international societies, universities etc in over 20 countries. Recent invited lectures include Aspects of Bioterrorism at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, USA and the McIndoe lecture at the Royal College of Surgeons, which was attended by the Duke of Edinburgh. Professor McGrouther has also been instrumental in communicating science to the public through a variety of mechanisms: Royal Institution Friday Evening Discourse, RSA, open public lectures, lectures at the Medical Journalists Association, numerous press briefings, television interviews and feature articles, describing disfigurement as the last bastion of discrimination. He has promoted reconstructive surgical research nationally as a fund raiser, supervisor/Director of Research and mentor for over 100 Clinical Fellows and for a range of charities: Phoenix Appeal, Stoke Mandeville Burns, Blonde McIndoe, Raft, The Healing Foundation etc. As an Invited Member on the Council of the Royal College of Surgeons for Plastic Surgery, he chaired a working party on reconstructive surgery and is currently on the Scientific and Clinical Advisory Board of The Healing Foundation. As a mark of peer esteem, he was nominated as one of the ten foremost surgeons in the UK (Independent on Sunday).