“My upbringing revolved around a small farm and pub in Co Down, and the pub nurtured a love of hearing people’s stories. It’s one of the reasons I love my specialty: I get to hear patients’ stories, alongside the opportunity to perform surgery.
“When people come to Auralia to discuss weight-loss (bariatric) surgery, I don’t initially ask about their weight, but they often tell me about experiences such as not being able to get a seat on a bus or missing out on a job because of an unconscious bias during the hiring process.
“There is still such a stigma around obesity. Even the language can be negative, with adjectives like ‘lazy’, ‘sick’, and ‘tired’ shaping the narrative.
“I studied medicine in Belfast and enjoyed it so much that three siblings followed suit. There were no medics in the family until my generation. Today, one sister is a GP, another is a consultant in infectious diseases, I’ve a brother who’s a radiologist, and another who is a pharmacist. I also have 15 cousins on both sides of the family who work in medicine.
“I spent several years training abroad, gaining exposure to international best practice in weight-loss surgery. It’s an exciting area, especially for patients with diabetes, with linked conditions like high blood pressure and arthritis in the hips and knees. Bariatric surgery is one of the few specialties that brings immediate improvements to quality of life, relieving pain in the hips and knees.
“Traditional surgical options to treat obesity include gastric bypass and gastric sleeve procedures, but, at Auralia, we also offer the Allurion Balloon. It’s a swallowable, temporary balloon that sits in the stomach for about four months, helping you feel fuller after smaller meals, before it deflates and passes naturally.
“Last month, French-Canadian professor Michel Gagner, a pioneer of magnetic bariatric surgery, visited Auralia to supervise me using his technique on two patients.
“The procedure uses specially designed magnets to create a new connection between two sections of the intestine instead of the conventional cutting and stitching or stapling the bowel. After a couple of weeks, the magnets are naturally passed through the digestive tract. It’s genuinely cutting-edge surgery.”