Professor Mike Thomson

Qualifications and training

• Aberdeen University
• Leeds University
• Brisbane Centre of Paediatric Gastroenterology – research for Medical Doctorate in
• Nutrition and Energy expenditure in Cystic Fibrosis
• Birmingham Children’s Liver Transplant Unit
• The Portland Hospital for Women and Children
• Sheffield Children’s NHS Foundation Trust

Letters

MB ChB, DCH, MRCP(Paeds), FRCPCH, MD, FRCP

Career

Early training

Paediatric Gastroenterologist and Professor at the Centre for Paediatric Gastroenterology in Sheffield. He graduated from Aberdeen Medical School in 1985 and started paediatric gastroenterology training in 1987/8. In the early 1990s he spent five years working in Australia, as a Clinical Research Fellow in gastroenterology and cystic fibrosis at the Royal Children’s Hospital Foundation in Brisbane with Prof Ross Shepherd. While there he was awarded his Medical Doctorate on cystic fibrosis genetics and energy expenditure.

Professor Thomson’s interests include endoscopy training and interventional endoscopy. His first position when he moved back to the UK was as a Child Health Lecturer in the Liver Transplant Unit at Birmingham Children’s Hospital with Prof Deirdre Kelly. He was subsequently, in 1995, appointed as a Consultant at the Royal Free Hospital at the Unit of one of the founders of modern-day paediatric gastroenterology, Prof John Walker-Smith.

Arriving at Sheffield Children’s Hospital in 2004 he saw an opportunity to develop an internationally recognised Paediatric Gastroenterology Centre attracting a fantastic group of colleagues over the years – a team of over 60 now – with complementary skillsets. Children are treated more quickly and efficiently than in any other unit in the UK, and referred not just from local doctors but from all over the region, nationally and internationally.

Clinical leadership and education

Prof Mike Thomson is recognised as the driving force behind paediatric endoscopy innovation worldwide and has led and formed the European Endoscopy Working Group.

He has organized and runs the foremost hands-on paediatric endoscopy training courses in the world – both diagnostic and therapeutic. He has pioneered the use of minimally invasive endoscopic treatments for many pathologies in childhood over the past 40 years. He has published more than 250 peer-reviewed articles and also over 100 invited reviews and heads a large research group. He has led and co-authored more than 50 Guidelines and Position Papers for Europe (ESPGHAN) and joint with North America (NASPGHAN) and worldwide (FISPGHAN). He is author of over 60 Paediatric GI Chapters in International Textbooks and is co-author of 7 paediatric textbooks including the standard text for MRCPCH, ‘Concise Paediatrics’. He has co-edited the textbook which is now the standard text for the paediatric oesophagus and stomach.

Perhaps his greatest achievement to date is the recognised definitive text on paediatric endoscopy: ‘Practical Pediatric Gastrointestinal Endoscopy’ now in production for its 4th Edition. This has over 60 Chapters with contributions from the best in this field and deals with all aspects of this fascinating discipline.

Hundreds of endoscopy trainees from over 50 countries have come through the Sheffield International Academy of Paediatric Endoscopy Training programme. He has engineered the ESPGHAN Endoscopy Fellowship programme now in its 8th year and started the Endoscopy Learning Zone at the Annual ESPGHAN Meeting now in its 10th year.

He is passionate about excellence in paediatric endoscopy and minimally invasive approaches to luminal and extra-luminal problems and works closely with paediatric surgeons in this interface: techniques such as endoscopic anti-reflux procedures and all other natural orifice endoscopic therapeutic techniques are testament to this vision.

Clinical interests

Clinical interests include all aspects of gastrointestinal (GI), nutritional and liver problems in children – such as recurrent abdominal pain, reflux, allergic GI conditions including eosinophilic oesophagitis, inflammatory bowel disease, coeliac disease, causes of diarrhoea and poor growth and constipation.

Research subjects

• Ergonomics of colonoscopy in a robotic model with real time feedback or torque and stress transferring from the model to the in vivo situation in children.
• Interventional therapeutic anti-reflux endoscopy for the treatment of gastro-oesophageal reflux of childhood.
• Wireless capsule yield in IBD and other pathologies in children.
• Occult and obscure GI bleeding in children.
• Endomucosal resection in difficult polyps in children.
• Water immersion colonoscopy and ileo-colonoscopy loops in children.
• ARFID and PEG in children.
• Chronic enteric mucosal ulcerating syndrome in children.
• POEM and achalasia quality of life in children.
• Endoscopic dilation in Crohn’s disease.