Having been fortunate enough to have established the UK’s first high volume, academic deep brain stimulation service in over a decade at St George’s University Hospital in south west London in 2016, it is humbling to have been awarded the opportunity to establish another high quality private neuromodulation clinic in central London’s Harley Street. High tech, state of the art brain surgery requires considerable investment and faith by any hospital’s directors as well as the equipment and infrastructure of intensive care, specialist nursing and training. In partnership with The London Clinic, we created London Deep Brain Stimulation, a multi-disciplinary team of experienced experts and friends:
Professor Tipu Aziz from Oxford University who trained me and pioneered deep brain stimulation (DBS) and lesions for movement disorders and pain in the UK in the 1990s. His groundbreaking scientific research led to the establishment of subthalamic nucleus DBS for Parkinson’s disease and discovery of pedunculopontine nucleus DBS for freezing and falling in Parkinson’s disease. He has one of the largest surgery for movement disorders and certainly the largest DBS for pain experience in the world. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences and Fellow of the Faculty of Pain Medicine of the Royal College of Anaesthetists. This year he will be the first neurosurgeon still in active clinical practice to be awarded the prestigious Medal of the Society of British Neurological Surgeons, a testament to his brilliance. He continues to be very research active, currently running promising trials in DBS for anorexia nervosa and post-stroke pain.
Professor Dipankar Nandi from Imperial College London, also trained by Professor Aziz and who did the pioneering pedunculopontine nucleus DBS research under his supervision and heads the Imperial College functional neurosurgery service.
Dr Moein Tavakkoli, consultant anaesthetist and pain doctor at University College Hospitals and St George’s Hospital.
Dr. Dominic Paviour, consultant neurologist at St George’s University Hospital, clinical lead of our advanced movement disorders treatment team there.
me, consultant neurosurgeon and director of functional neurosurgery at St George’s University Hospital.
As a charity investing in clinical research, The London Clinic is a really good fit for our team, standing out from other purely commercial Harley Street and central London private hospitals. We treated a handful of international patients in 2018 with DBS at The London Clinic with Parkinson’s disease, dystonia and chronic pain, and many more with spinal cord stimulation. We use all the major manufacturers (Abbott, Boston Scientific, Nevro, Medtronic), choosing system and model based on the clinical team’s expert opinion and patient choice. We have done charitable surgeries and last year I was the first neurosurgeon in the UK to implant a new, cost-effective DBS system made in China. Our work was featured in this month’s Prognosis Magazine (p48), the journal for the Harley Street medical area. It has also been recently showcased in a video by the British engineering firm Renishaw, who make the DBS neurosurgical planning software that I frequently use.
We are happy to treat patients with deep brain stimulation, spinal cord stimulation or brain lesions both privately at The London Clinic and in the NHS and privately at St George’s. See the London DBS website for more details.
Three ‘generations’ of directors of deep brain stimulation in their respective UK University Teaching Hospitals, operating together as a team for a good cause, making a tiny hole in the head of a charitably funded patient from the developing world during a minimally invasive DBS surgery. Myself from St George’s University of London turning the drill, Prof. Dipankar Nandi from Imperial College London in the middle, and our mentor, Prof. Tipu Aziz from Oxford University on the right.
If you would like to donate to my research into deep brain stimulation and spinal cord stimulation, please contact the Neurosciences Research Foundation (NRF), a charity based at St George’s, University of London. If you would like to give in a tax-efficient manner please contact Carole Bramwell for further information or click here, quoting reference TAPAA (which is my research fund within the NRF).
London brain and spine surgeon 
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