As we write this, at the end of September, we are delighted to report that the Kent ENT Partnership is well and truly up and running. Mr Al-lami has started his clinics at KIMS Hospital in Maidstone and already has his first operating list booked next month.
Mr Hone has his first clinic at KIMS Hospital at the start of next month and is looking forward to getting to know and work with the team. His clinics at One Ashford Hospital have been fully booked and we have been busy creating extra clinic capacity to cope with demand.
The Robotics service in East Kent is now well established and Mr Al-lami has started a quality improvement project looking at patients’ swallowing after their robotic surgery. The clinical trial PATHOS is now open to recruitment in East Kent and we are hoping to enrol our first patients into the trial soon and would like to expand recruitment to include all of Kent.
Robert Hone has taken over as education supervisor for the Foundation Year trainees and General Practice trainees during their placement within the ENT department. He now monitors and facilitates their training through the ENT Department in East Kent, making sure they make adequate progress and progress throughout their training. Meanwhile, Ali-Al-lami is in charge of a special study module involving medical students from King’s College London investigating robotic surgery and patient outcomes.
Mr Al-lami and Mr Hone were both invited to participate as faculty for the 1st Guildford Transoral Robotic Surgery Dissection Course in September set up by David Walker, a consultant surgeon in Guildford. Mr Al-lami gave a talk on Head and Neck cancer with specific focus on Transoral Tongue Base Mucosectomy (where the back of the tongue is removed through the mouth to try and identify where the cancer started). During the course, Mr Hone facilitated a group session discussing complex cases and their management. The course was a great success with an excellent faculty, including both the intuitive proctors who visited East Kent when we started our programme.