The Eileen Albert & LAP Research Travelling Fellowship 2016

The 2016 prize-winner was Mr Sas Banerjee who travelled to the National Cancer Centre Hospital (NCCH) in Tokyo to learn new techniques that have the ability of reducing the risk of HPB disease in terms of metastases.

Mr Banerjee is a Consultant General & Colorectal Surgeon in London and works at Queens Hospital (Barking Havering Redbridge NHS University Trust). He is a specialist bowel cancer surgeon and manages patients who have been identified with secondary liver cancer collaboratively with his Hepatobiliary surgical colleagues. Identifying and treating early bowel cancer in the minimally invasive way improves the outcomes for the patients and reduces the risk of distant spread of the cancer including to the liver and this was the purpose of the trip to Tokyo.

Colonic polyps can transform into bowel cancer and that can then spread to the liver. The skills for early therapeutic removal of polyps at most centres in the UK are restricted to polypectomy with endoscopic mucosal resection (EMR). More complex polyps that are not amenable to be removed endoscopically may need a complex operation to remove a segment of the colon. The NCCH has a world class practice that allows complex polyps (even with early cancer or near cancer) to be treated with endoscopic techniques like Endosubmucosal Dissection (ESD) and this was the predominant focus of the visit.

In Tokyo for 4 weeks as a Visiting Fellow he was mentored by a world-renowned team led by Dr Yutaka Saito. During the Fellowship he was able to see multiple patients who had treatment with ESD.

Since his return to the UK, Mr Banerjee has attended the Hands on ESD Course (June 2016) & the Endo-Live conference (November 2016) at King's College Hospital, He has joined the UK ESD Interest Group led by Dr Sunil Dolwani (Cardiff) with 2 of his other colleagues from his NHS Trust. One of his colleagues also has travelled to the NCCH and a working group has been brought together to provde the technique at the Trust. Dr Saito and his colleagues have offered to visit the Trust and help with mentoring and setting up of courses and the practice.

After returning from Tokyo, Mr Banerjee participated in a 10K run in April 2016 to raise funds for LAP Research.

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