North East London and Essex Endoscopic and Microsurgical Skull Base Fellowship

Based at: Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust

Surgical Specialty Association approving: RCS England

Approval period: March 2019–May 2022, reapproved March 2024–February 2027

Supervisor/Lead Consultant: Mr Jonathan Pollock and Mr Alireza Shoakazemi are the named Supervisors for the Queen’s Hospital, Romford, site, and Mr Dimitrios Paraskevopoulos and Mr Jarnail Bal are the named Supervisor for the Barts and the Royal London site.

Fellowship duration: 12 months

Stated learning outcomes:

Demonstrate ability to manage both operative and non-operative patients.
Demonstrate safe and evidence based selection of patients for surgery.

Clinical competencies to be achieved:

To be able to perform safe surgery on common cranial base meningiomas, that is, olfactory groove, suprasellar meningiomas, tentorial and petrous temporal meningiomas, petroclival meningiomas, pituitary and sellar tumours.
The surgical and endocrinological assessment and investigation of patients with skull base and pituitary lesions.
To have had exposure to skull-base and craniofacial surgical access, including standard variations of fronto-basal, fronto-orbital, trans-zygomatic, infratemporal, trans-temporal, far-lateral and transmaxillary approaches.
To be confident to plan and able to perform the following approaches independently: Microsurgical and endoscopic transsphenoidal tumours; Pterional, sub frontal, interhemispheric, rectosigmoid and trans ventricular.

The number of main operations the fellow could expect to be involved in:

By the end of the 12 months, the candidate should have performed between 20–30 pituitary operations and within the region of at least 100 skull base procedures.

Fellows awarded Fellowship Certificate (dates of Fellowship):

Mr Jarnail Bal (2020 - 2021)
Mr Samir Matloub ( 2021-2022)
Ms Dace Dimante ( 2022-2023)
Ms Anna Ovieda ( 2023-2024)