Mr zahir Soonawalla

After qualifying in Mumbai, Zahir trained in hepatobiliary and pancreatic surgery at London, Birmingham and Cardiff. As a travelling fellow, he visited the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Centre in New York and the liver surgery unit in Nagoya, Japan. Since 2005, he has been a consultant at the Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. The unit has grown and developed a reputable for providing a high quality patient-focussed service and excellent training. The unit also excels in running a variety of research trials and novel options for their patients. As Lead clinician, Zahir developed the service for delivery of gall bladder surgery, with a service-improvement project that improved the rate of day-case procedures from 24% to 80%. He has published articles on bile duct injury arising from cholecystectomy and is a medical expert in this field. His work on reducing surgical infections and improving outcomes was highly commended at the Patient Safety Congress, 2016.  Zahir initially started minimally-invasive liver and pancreatic resections at Oxford back in 2005, and established a centre of excellence for minimally invasive HPB surgery. Since 2021 he has led the introduction of robotic liver and pancreas resections - Oxford is presently one of the leading units in the UK in this field, with Zahir performing major pancreatic and liver resections robotically. He also specialises in surgery for neuroendocrine tumours involving the small intestine, pancreas and liver. Having been the Clinical Director for General Surgery and the deputy Divisional Medical Director, Zahir has a keen interest in clinical governance and surgical outcomes. He is leading the development of a Surgical Morbidity Tracker at the OUH to help track the incidence of complications, highlighting any trends and improving quality of care at the hospital.

1. Mr Soonawalla is a specialist in gall bladder and bile duct surgery. He has an interest in complications from gall bladder surgery and their prevention. 2. He specialises in surgery for pancreatic and liver tumours and has developed laparoscopic and robotic surgical services at Oxford. 3. Another area of interest is the management of neuroendocrine tumours, and Zahir is the HPB surgeon for the Oxford Nueroendocrine Tumours Centre of Excellence. 4. Zahir is the Clinical Director of the Department of Surgery, and previously was Deputy Divisional Medical Director.