Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon
My name is Richard Sinnerton and I am an orthopaedic surgeon who deals with problems affecting the shoulder, elbow and some simple hand conditions.
I was born in Ballymena in Northern Ireland in 1963 and moved to Brussels in 1976 where I did my O and A levels at The British School. I always wanted to be a surgeon and was offered a place to study medicine at St. Thomas’ Hospital Medical School where I started in 1983. My training as an orthopaedic surgeon was based at St. Mary’s Hospital in London and I became a consultant in 1998. For about 7 years I worked at Ashford and St.Peter’s NHS Trust but became so disillusioned with the way the NHS was run and how difficult it was to provide a good service for my patients, that I resigned in 2005. Interestingly I now treat many more NHS patients under the Choose and Book scheme and in much nicer conditions, than I ever could while employed by the NHS!
My interest in shoulder surgery came about through meeting and working for Professor Pascal Boileau. I had the fortune to spend a year as his Fellow (a sort of surgical apprenticeship) in Nice in 1996. He is a charismatic and inspirational man, teacher and surgeon and, I am proud to say, became a close friend. His ideas and techniques were way ahead of their time but have now become main-stream practice.
A few years ago I set up the London Upper Limb Unit (now more accurately renamed Shoulder-Elbow-Hand) as a means of allowing people with shoulder, elbow and hand problems to find out more about what might be wrong with them and to come and see me to discuss their worries and see if I could do something to help them.
I am not someone who wants to operate straight away on everyone who comes through the door and in many cases time, rehabilitation and medication is all that is needed once we have made the diagnosis. Most patients are reassured by that but surgery is sometimes required if the symptoms don’t settle or if they recur.
I hope that the information on this web-site will tell you all you need to know about your shoulder, elbow or hand problem and how we can go about getting you back to normal.
