Andrew was born and brought up in London where he was educated at Westminster School. He did his undergraduate medical training at The London Hospital Medical College, University of London and attained his MBBS in 1988. His general surgical training was in London and Bristol, and was awarded Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons of England (FRCS Eng) in 1992.
It had always been his ambition to choose a career in neurosurgery. His initial training was in both neurology and neurosurgery at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge. After achieving the FRCS, he gained a Registrar post in Neurosurgery on a rotation between The Brook Hospital and the Maudsley Hospital in 1993. In 1995, these 2 south London neurosurgical units combined to form the current Department of Neurosurgery at King’s College Hospital.
In 1996 Andrew was appointed Senior Registrar in Neurosurgery in Manchester, working between 2 of the 3 neurosurgical centres then based in Manchester, at Manchester Royal Infirmary and at Hope Hospital, Salford.
In 1998, he was appointment Consultant Neurosurgeon at Hope Hospital (now Salford Royal Hospital). In the same year the Department of Neurosurgery at North Manchester moved into Hope Hospital at Salford and the unit at Manchester Royal Infirmary completed the unification of Neurosciences in Manchester by moving to Salford in 2001. The unit is now one of the largest neurosurgical and spinal units in the country with 18 consultant neurosurgeons and a further 9 spinal orthopaedic surgeons. These 2 specialties work together in the Department of Surgical Neurosciences of which Andrew is Clinical Director.
From the start of his career as a Consultant Neurosurgeon, he has had a broad general neurosurgical practice including degenerative spinal disease and regular on-call neurosurgical emergency work, including trauma and intracranial haemorrhage.
He has developed a subspecialty interest in skull base neurosurgery, initially with working with one of the foremost international experts in this field, Professor Richard Ramsden, Consultant ENT Surgeon, again based in Manchester.
Since the appointment of Scott Rutherford in 2006, the skull base practice has expanded to be one of the busiest in Europe producing world class surgical outcomes. The subspecialty interest involves surgery for benign tumours at the base of the brain such as vestibular Schwannomas and meningiomas and these microsurgical skills are also used in the management of trigeminal neuralgia.
Andrew is Immediate Past President of the British Skull Base Society. He is also a member of the European Skull Base Society and the Society of British Neurological Surgeons, of which he is on the Academic Committee.
In addition to his spinal and skull base clinical practice, he has developed over his 15 years as a Consultant Neurosurgeon, a significant research interest largely in the neurovascular field. This highly productive collaborative research work, in a team that includes Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell, FRS, President of the University of Manchester, Professor Pippa Tyrell, Professor of Stroke Medicine and Professor Stuart Allen, Professor of Neurosciences, has achieved grant income of around £3 million, and published extensively in the field. As a result of this work, he was awarded a personal Chair in 2012 and is now Honorary Professor of Neurosurgery at the University of Manchester.
In addition to this neurovascular research work, which he, along with Scott Rutherford, has published in the Skull Base field as well as in the area of head trauma. A list of Andrew’s publications can be found by clicking here.
Andrew and Scott run an internationally acclaimed sub-specialty training fellowship in skull base neurosurgery. This attracts trainees from the UK and abroad and following their training, they have all gone on to successful consultant careers in the UK, Europe and Australia.
Andrew is married to Sarah, a GP in South Manchester and they have 2 daughters. Away from neurosurgery, he enjoys travel and playing golf, the latter badly.