MissCelia Theodoreli Riga

Celia Theodoreli - Riga is a Consultant Vascular Surgeon and Professor of Practice (Surgery & Education) at Imperial College London. She is the Head of the Postgraduate School of Surgery in London (NHS England), responsible for the quality of surgical training in all of London's hospitals for more than 1500 trainees across the 10 surgical specialties. She previously served as the Surgical Training Committee (STC) Chair and Training Programme Director (TPD) in Vascular Surgery for the London region. She is clinically practising at St Mary's Hospital, Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, The Lindo Wing, The Harley Street Clinic and The Wellington hospital. She previously served on the UKRI/EPSRC Healthcare Technologies Strategic Advisory Board. She is also an Honorary Consultant Surgeon at The Royal Marsden Foundation Trust. She was educated at Athens College before moving to London. She gained her primary medical qualifications from Imperial College London in 2003. She completed her higher surgical training in London. She became a member of the Royal College of Surgeons in 2005 and an NIHR Academic Clinical Fellow in 2009. She obtained a Doctorate in Medicine from Imperial College supervised by Lord Darzi and Professor Cheshire. She was the first female NIHR Clinical Lecturer in Surgery appointed in 2010 and became a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in 2014. 

Her clinical expertise includes complex aortic disease and dissection, aortic aneurysms, occlusive vascular disease, varicose veins, carotid disease, stroke prevention, and endovascular technologies including robotics. She was one of the first clinicians to introduced team training and innovative simulation programmes to vascular practice in collaboration with the Patient Safety Research Group. She led the UK's largest Skill Recovery Programme in response to the C-19 pandemic across 8 surgical specialties and received the 2022 HEE National Innovation Award for sustainable postgraduate medical education. She has been a keen advocate for education and surgical trainees and remains committed to applying principles of safety and quality towards the development of high-performing surgical teams, and overseeing the INSIGHTS-UK 15-year Surgical Training Review. 

She has an international reputation as a speaker with over 300 podium presentations, over 100 peer-reviewed publications and book chapters. She acts as a Reviewer for 11 Journals including Circulation, Annals of Surgery, BMJ and the BJS. She sits on the National Selection Panel for General/Vascular Surgery, Imperial College School of Medicine Admissions Panel and the HEE London School of Surgery Board. She has served as an Examiner for Imperial College and Oxford University undergraduate examinations, and currently serves on the Court of Examiners for the Royal College of Surgeons Fellowship Examination in Vascular Surgery.

Her research interests focus on innovative techniques for the treatment of arterial and venous disease, incorporating new advances in technology and has significant experience in Medtech and clinical translation for medical devices. She has served on the New Interventional Procedures Committee which regulates and monitors clinical adoption of novel devices and techniques across all Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust sites. She works closely with the engineering group at the Hamlyn Centre supported by the Wolfson Foundation, NIHR and the EPSRC. She led the translational endovascular robotic research theme at Imperial College, publishing the first pre-clinical evidence for the advantages of robotic technology in complex endovascular tasks such as supra-aortic branch intervention and fenestrated endografting. She formed the team that performed the world’s first robot-assisted endovascular aneurysm repair in 2008. She has led and championed the vascular Robotics program at Imperial from concept to implementation and has the largest experience of robot-assisted endovascular therapies worldwide with over 150 cases. Her research has won 30 national and international prizes, attracting over £10million in funding including a UK flagship EPSRC investment to make Imperial the UK's largest translational Micro-Robotics facility.

For further info:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/2602396/British-doctors-perform-world-first-robot-surgery.html

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/news/9016923/British-surgeons-pioneer-surgery-with-robotic-arm.html

https://vascularnews.com/the-current-status-of-new-technologies-and-robotics-in-vascular-surgery/

https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/photos/the-prince-of-wales-hospital-surgical-innovation?mediatype=photography&phrase=the prince of Wales hospital surgical innovation&sort=mostpopular

http://hamlyn.doc.ic.ac.uk/capital/about-us/facility

https://www.imperial.nhs.uk/our-services/surgery/vascular-surgery