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Nicholas Thomas qualified from the London Hospital in 1988. Following general surgical training he completed the Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons FRCS (Glasgow) and FRCS (England) in 1993. He trained in neurosurgery at the Atkinson Morley’s Hospital, Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children and the National Hospital, Queen Square in London in addition to a year’s Spinal Fellowship at Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio. He completed the FRCS in Surgical Neurology in 1998.

He was appointed a Consultant Neurosurgeon at King’s College Hospital, London in 1998 at the age of 33. With a broad clinical practice, sub-specialty interests include complex spinal surgery, anterior and lateral skull base surgery (including vestibular schwannoma surgery) and endoscopic pituitary and skull base surgery. Within these, he has a particular interest in chordoma, condrosarcoma, basilar invagination, craniopharyngioma and acoustic neuroma.

He runs a national multi-disciplinary dedicated to neurofibromatosis and von Hippel Lindau disease clinic. 

He is widely acknowledged as one of the world’s leading Skull Base surgeons and the pioneer of endoscopic Skull Base surgery in the UK and as such he is UK President of the British Skull Based Society. 

He is a valued panel member on international workshops on endoscopic pituitary surgery (e.g. Guy’s and St Thomas’ and Coventry) as well as ‘open’ lateral skull base surgery (e.g. Copenhagen Skull Base Course).

For the past 22 years he has visited Sri Lanka to lecture and perform operations with local neurosurgeons at the National Hospital and Sri Jayawardenapura Hospital in Colombo on a charitable basis.

Richard Gullan qualified at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, London and started his surgical career on the Professorial Surgical Unit there before continuing general training to obtain his Membership of the Royal College of Physicians and Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons of England. He undertook neurosurgical training in Cambridge, Edinburgh and London prior to being appointed in 1988 as Consultant Neurosurgeon to the SE Thames Regional Neurosurgical Unit at the Brook Hospital, which was amalgamated with the Guy’s/Maudsley Unit to create the King’s College Hospital Neuroscience Centre in 1995, where he is the senior neurosurgeon.

He developed a large practice in spinal and neurovascular surgery and created one of the first multidisciplinary Neuro-Oncology clinics in the NHS and the Private Sector in the UK.

Within the field of spinal neurosurgery he has established a reputation of being at the forefront of many techniques. He presented the first use of posterior instrumented stabilization for malignant disease affecting the spinal column just prior to his appointment as a consultant neurosurgeon and was the first neurosurgeon worldwide to pilot the use of intervertebral fusion cages for cervical disc surgery and the first to introduce posterior lumbar interbody fusion to neurosurgeons in the UK. These techniques have since become commonly employed on an international basis.

He was amongst the first within British neurosurgical practice to employ the use of pedicle screw instrumentation, trans-oral spinal surgery for complex cranio-cervical disorders, percutaneous disc surgery, cervical disc arthroplasty and pioneered surgery under local anaesthesia for spinal decompressive procedures in high risk patients.

Work in these fields has been presented and published widely over 20 years of consultant practice. He continues to have a major interest in the management of brain and spinal tumours and is actively engaged in the introduction of the first Cyberknife Unit in the UK.

Teaching, especially operative technique and clinical decision making to young neurosurgeons has been a much cherished activity and he has been significantly involved in the training of over a dozen senior trainees who have gone on to take up consultant neurosurgical posts in the UK as well as trainees who have been appointed to senior positions abroad.