Professor Martin Birchall

Professional Biography

Additional Information

COVID-19 Specific Projects / Groups

Professor Birchall established and lead the UCLH/UCL Partners Surgical COVID-19 research group. The group has published widely on matters relating to the effects of COVID-19 on surgery. He was part of the core team that completed the national COVID-19 tracheostomy audit (COVIDTrach) and the national group that established guidance for the performance and management of tracheostomies in COVID-19 patients.

He lead a group developing devices to improve communication in theatre trams wearing full PPE, and another group studying the effects of COVID-19 on cancer outcomes (especially head and neck, colorectal, upper GI and lung cancers, RECONCILE group). He is part of a London-based group of surgeons managing and reporting on the after effects of severe COVID-19 infection on the airway.

Career Highlights

Professor Birchall co-led the teams that performed the world’s first tissue-engineered organ (tracheal) transplants in adults and children (2008-16), and the team that performed the world’s second laryngeal transplant in California in 2010 (he led the planning and performed reinnervation). The latter lady recipient is alive and well with a functioning transplant today.

Awards

Morgan Stanley/Daily Telegraph Briton of the Year for Science and Technology in 2008.

Co-founder and President of the British Laryngological Association, the largest such association in the world outside the US.

Gold National Clinical Excellence Award.

He was the first ENT Surgeon to be elected to the Academy of Medical Sciences for my contribution to research in the name of advancing health.

Memberships

GMC, Royal College of Surgeons of England (Fellow since 1988 and member of the Research Board since 2002); Academy of Medical Sciences; American Broncho-Esophagological Association (first Briton to be elected); British Laryngological Association (Past-President and Council Member); Dysphagia Research Society

Cutting Edge Technologies

He is one of only four surgeons in the UK regularly performing laryngeal reinnervation surgery for vocal cord paralysis; he uses office-based KTP/dye lasers and injection techniques for outpatient management of laryngeal problems; he was an early adopter of transnasal oesophagoscopy and have performed around 1000; he uses innovative techniques for managing pharyngeal pouches/Zenker’s diverticulae

Publications

Professor Birchall has published over 250 scientific peer-reviewed papers. He is the country’s leading ENT academic surgeon with an annual research income to my group/lab of over £1million. His focus is on the dvelopment of new technologies to help restore laryngeal and swallowing function when this has been lost due to trauma or disease, including biomaterials, tissue engineering, transplantation and, latterly and excitingly, soft robotics and AI.

Publications include:
A Diagnostic Atlas of Tumors of the Upper Aero-Digestive Tract
A Transnasal Video Endoscopic Approach
Edited By Tim Price, Paul Montgomery, Martin Birchall, Patrick Gullane Copyright Year 2012