Tom Hugh is an Upper Gastrointestinal Surgeon based at Royal North Shore Hospital and North Shore Private Hospital. He specialises in the treatment of patients with gallstones, liver tumours, and abdominal wall and groin hernias.
Tom graduated from the University of Sydney, Australia and undertook his surgical training at Royal North Shore Hospital. He pursued further postgraduate clinical training in the United Kingdom. In 1997 he was awarded an MD in cellular oncology from the University of Liverpool, UK. In 2016 he was appointed as Professor and Chair of Surgery at the Northern Clinical School, University of Sydney based at Royal North Shore Hospital.
He is the founder and Director of the Surgical, Education, Research and Training (SERT) Institute at Royal North Shore Hospital (https://www.surgery.rnsh.org/). He is passionate about high-quality, evidence-based clinical care and the training of future surgeons. He undertakes both clinical and laboratory research and currently supervises several PhD and Masters students.
He was a co-founder of the RNSH Clinical Skills Centre, located within the Sydney Clinical Skills and Simulation Centre, in the Kolling Building, RNSH. (https://www.scssc.edu.au/). He has organised and taught many open and laparoscopic skills courses over the past 20 years.
His clinical interests include quality outcomes for patients after laparoscopic cholecystectomy (keyhole surgery for gallstones), after liver resection for malignant tumours, and after short stay inguinal and femoral hernia repair. His laboratory interests include genomic markers in peri-tumour stromal, and proteomic profiling of excised colorectal liver metastases. Professor Hugh has co-authored >120 peer-reviewed publications and book chapters.
Professor Hugh established the Data Analysis and Surgical Outcomes (DASO) unit (https://www.rnsdaso.org/) at RNSH in 2016 and he is passionate about clinical audit and surgical outcomes research. To this end he keeps detailed clinical outcomes data on his patients following operative intervention, and this provides accurate information about the most likely post-operative course for patients.