UK

Henk Giele schooled and trained in Western Australia, did his Masters in microsurgery at the Bernard O’Brien Institute of Microsurgery, University of Melbourne, then surgical fellowships in Paris and Oxford. He has been a consultant hand and plastic surgeon in Oxford at the Radcliffe Hospitals and Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre (now the Oxford University Hospitals) since the year they invented the DVD, Hotmail, and the flash drive!

Henk’s speciality interests are in 1) Orthoplastics (microsurgical reconstruction after trauma, musculoskeletal infection, and resection of bone and soft tissue sarcoma), 2) hand surgery including congenital upper limb anomalies, trauma and degenerative conditions 3) brachial plexus and peripheral nerve conditions, including restoration of function by nerve or tendon transfers, 4) transplantation particularly vascularised composite allografts, of which he has performed ¼ of the World’s total number of VCA transplants. The Oxford unit and Leeds are contracted by NHSE (National Health Service England) to provide hand transplantation in the UK. Henk has a particular interest in developing creative microsurgical solutions to difficult problems.

Henk Giele is research active directing a research team called ORPHIC ( Oxford Research in Plastic Hand Surgery Innovation Collaboration). We have five main themes of research.

• Transplantation- the use of skin VCA flaps in monitoring organ transplants; immunological mechanisms of VCA rejection; psychological aspects of visible transplants; perfecting the preservation of VCA by machine perfusion
• Cellular therapies- improving islet transplantation to cure diabetes; using MSC to alter inflammatory and immunological responses
• Clinical Trials- in plastic, hand, nerve, and transplant surgery
• Experimental surgery- devising innovative surgical procedures to treat difficult surgical problems and patients.