Commitment to Clinical Excellence
My career in Endovascular Surgery started in 1991 when I recognised the potential of keyhole treatment and made sure that my department became involved early in research, development and treatment.
I have been involved increasingly ever since and as a result, the department in Galway now receives and carries out more endovascular procedures than many vascular centres in Europe. The outcome data in the department are equal to or better than published international results and reflect our commitment to specialised care and practice volumes. My enthusiasm for and commitment to endovascular procedures has allowed me to forge a relationship with industry that produces many of the devices, which we use. This has been beneficial to the department giving us early access to the newest devices with which we can further our research interests.
I started the Veins Unit at UGH in 2005.
This unit is staffed by a specialist Vascular Nurse with full physician back-up and provides out-patient treatment of venous disease at UGH and by satellite link to outreach clinics through the Western Region.
My commitment to technical innovation has produced a number of innovations and allowed the department to launch a number of initiatives. An example of this is the use of a sequential compression device that I have described in international publications and appears to dramatically improves limb salvage rates in critically ischaemic limbs. We were the first centre outside the US to use a novel TWO2 portable box device for topical hyperbaric oxygen treatment of refractory venous ulcers and because of our excellent preliminary results have been chosen as the lead centre for an international multi-disciplinary large-scale randomized trial on the TWO2 device.