Mr Toby Richards

Mr Toby Richards, Senior Lecturer in Surgery
Honorary Consultant in Vascular & Endovascular Surgery, UCL

Mr Toby Richards is an academic Senior Lecturer at the University College London and practising Vascular Surgeon at University College hospital. He has a strong interest in blood conservation developed from his time in training on the renal transplant unit at Oxford. He has explored the prevalence and effect of preoperative anaemia in surgical practise and the impact of preoperative anaemia on transfusion and patient outcomes following operation. This has been paralleled by prospective studies to assess the relationships of absolute and functional iron deficiency in surgical patients.

He has collaborated in several international audits to highlight the problem of perioperative anaemia including analysis of 227,425 patients from the US Veterans NSQIP database showing anaemia had independent effect on outcome in patients undergoing elective surgery (Lancet 2011). As part of the Western Australia Patient Blood Management Team, implementation of a PBM programme has produced a year on year reduction of blood transfusion. In 2011 issuance of RBCs was 27.9 units per 1000 population, the lowest published figure in the developed world with a direct saving of $3.4 million

Mr Richards has an ongoing 'iron first' approach to treat anaemia before and after operation. He is currently running a NIHR HTA multicentre RCT to explore the effect of intravenous iron to prevent transfusion (PREVENTT) in patients undergoing major surgery.