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Robert Macadam MB ChB PhD FRCS Eng. FRCS (Gen Surg)
I spent a lot of time in and around hospitals as child. I saw the effect of chronic debilitating disease on my own mother who was wheelchair bound with a rare form of osteomalacia when I was born. Some of my earliest memories are of trips to the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital in London to see the Consultant that had finally diagnosed and cured her condition. He was a hero in our household. When my father died suddenly after a short illness when I was 8 years old, it was difficult growing up the youngest of five children. It was even tougher on my mum. She didnt drive, hadn’t worked for many years when her children were small and there wasnt a lot of money in the house. Mum had also struggled with her weight for many years. I can vividly remember one day as a child in our kitchen trying to get the tips of my fingers to touch as I hugged her round her middle. She would make a joke about the fact my fingertips wouldn’t reach, but I knew it was hurting her to be overweight, hurting her bones and joints that remained desperately frail. So I said that I said that one day I would invent a knife that would slice away the excess so that I could get my arms around her properly. She laughed, saying if I could do that, I would become a very popular man indeed! This didn’t mean I was planning to be a doctor however – I had very mixed feelings about those guys! There were no doctors in our family, and mum had been treated fantastically by some of the specialists investigating her condition, but appallingly by others. Struggling to walk with two sticks one day, she turned to see a junior doctor impersonating her waddling gait for the amusement of a giggling nurse. It made her cry with anger and frustration, but only later, and out of sight.
Mum struggled with her weight all her life; over the years I watched her try everything from hypnosis to amphetamines to no avail. She didnt have paper qualifications, but nevertheless she was a very clever woman, and it was a source of great frustration that this was the one area of her life that she couldn’t seem to control. With hindsight, a combination of putting her children’s needs before her own, a busy lifestyle and mobilty problems, meant she just couldn’t shift her excess weight. It made her feel very unhappy.
When I went to medical school in 1985, it was to become a surgeon - that had become my goal. When I started to train in surgery (I have to be honest here) it never occurred to me to treat obesity. Like many of my peers, I wanted to do the big cancer operations. In 2005 I eventually achieved my goal, being appointed to a prestigious city centre university teaching hospital, and spending my days doing massive operations for stomach and oesophageal cancer.
Along the way however, I had encountered the growing sub-speciality of laparoscopic bariatric (or weight loss) surgery. My first NHS weight loss surgery clinics opened my eyes. Here were a group of patients that were having to fight and struggle to be taken seriously in just the way my mum had done, and who had to put up with the prejudice of some of the medical profession. Some of the patients I saw could be difficult, sometimes downright confrontational, but as I became more aware of their stories, I began to see their attitude was often a response to years of indifference from society and the medical profession. I began to see the life-changing and life-enhancing potential of modern keyhole surgery for obesity. Ninety minutes of my time in theatre to perform a laparoscopic gastric band or bypass could alter the whole course of a person’s life. I had seen first hand how struggling with a weight problem becomes a chronic illness, that effects not just the person, but the wider family and beyond.
When, after five years as an oesophagogastric surgeon, the opportunity arose to join Gravitas and become a full-time bariatric surgeon, I didn’t hesitate.
Curriculum Vitae
Consultant Laparoscopic Bariatric Surgeon
Bachelor of Medicine
Bachelor of Surgery
Doctor of Philosophy
Fellow of Royal College of Surgeons of England
Royal College of Surgeons Hadfield-Hoblsey Research Fellow
Medical Research Council Research Fellow
Married
Three children
Hobbies
Coaching my sons Rugby Union team