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Miss Alison Halliday
Research Areas
Biography Miss Halliday graduated from Southampton University Medical School in 1977. She gained her FRCS qualification in 1982 and her MS from Southampton University in 1986. Miss Halliday carried out her Registrar and Senior Registrar training at a number of hospitals including Hammersmith, Ashford and St Mary’s Hospitals. Consultant appointments include St Thomas’ and St Mary’s Hospitals. Miss Halliday has been employed as a Consultant Vascular Surgeon at St George’s Hospital and Epsom Hospital since 1999. She has a full-time vascular surgical consultant appointment involving 2 weekly outpatient clinics, 2 operating sessions, ward rounds and multidisciplinary meetings, as well as a busy ‘on-call’ commitment on a 1:5 rota for SW Thames Vascular Network (population 1.2 million). Miss Halliday is also a Senior Lecturer at St George’s and has recently been appointed Deputy Sub-Dean in Student Admissions. Miss Halliday’s current teaching responsibilities include organization of Vascular Surgical teaching of St George's (and overseas elective) medical students, interviewing and teaching for the Graduate Entry Programme, examining for MB BS, and she is also the Deputy Service Delivery Unit leader. Miss Halliday is a member of the Cardiovascular Research Group Committee and of the Cardiological Sciences Senior Staff committee. Miss Halliday’s currently supervises two postgraduate higher surgical degree projects (MS/MD) - one recently examined and awarded, one currently writing up. She also currently supervises one BST research project (with Prof Xu). Research Interests Miss Halliday is the principal investigator and holder of grants from the Medical Research Council, The Stroke Association and the Department of Health (CHI). The MRC grant funds the multicentre randomized Asymptomatic Carotid Surgery Trial (ACST), the largest vascular surgery trial in the world. At present 4 assistants are employed on this grant. The other 2 grants employ 2 full-time and will shortly also employ 2 part-time assistants. These two project grants are funding the basic work to develop UK audit systems for the major ‘indicator’ operations in vascular surgery, beginning with carotid surgery. Details of these research projects are given below: The Asymptomatic Carotid Surgery Trial (ACST) Results from the European Carotid Surgery Trial (ECST) reported in 1991 indicated that there is convincing evidence to support use of carotid endarterectomy (CEA) in prevention of stroke. This evidence is at present confined to those symptomatic patients with a carotid stenosis of >70%. Natural history studies suggest that those with asymptomatic tight carotid stenosis may also be at risk but no trial has yet convincingly demonstrated whether CEA prevents disabling stroke in these patients. The Asymptomatic Carotid Surgery Trial (ACST) is based at St George’s Medical School, and is a multicentre worldwide randomised controlled trial that involves close cooperation with Professor Richard Peto in the Oxford CTSU and the European clinicians who undertake CEA. The objective of ACST is to determine whether CEA prevents stroke in patients with asymptomatic carotid artery stenosis. 3120 patients were recruited between April 1993 and April 2003. More than 120 collaborators in 30 countries have taken part. As Principal Investigator, I obtained funding from the Stroke Association for the first three years totalling £150,000 and then MRC funding (£1.2m,1995-2004). This grant also provided salaries for a surgical research fellow and a top grade duplex technician for 2 years. A trial extension grant and follow up is planned to enable ACST to continue to 2008. This is now the largest trial in the world in Vascular Surgery and has provided valuable Level 1 evidence on the place of surgery in treatment of carotid stenosis. The results will be submitted to the Lancet for publication. UK Prospective Vascular Surgery Audit of UK Association and outcome of Carotid Endarterectomy I am currently, with Neurologists, Stroke Physicians and Vascular Surgeons undertaking a UK prospective audit of the indications for and results of carotid endarterectomy. This has now in the pilot phase and is funded by the Department of Health (CHI-CHAI). The definitive project will run for one year with lead in and follow up being completed within a second year. The project is also being funded by the Stroke Association. |
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