An honorary consultant and keyhole surgery pioneer at Addenbrooke’s Hospital has been recognised in the New Year’s honours list.
University of Cambridge Professor of Transplant Surgery, Michael Nicholson, (pictured above) receives an OBE for services to transplantation.
Professor Nicholson performed the first laparoscopic live donor nephrectomy in the UK and has now performed several hundred of these operations for the Trust. In February 2023 he was featured in the acclaimed BBC Two documentary ‘Surgeons: At the Edge of Life’.
He was filmed with colleagues undertaking a living donor transplant after a husband agreed to give up one of his kidneys to help his wife diagnosed with end stage kidney failure. The procedure was described as an “all-day surgical marathon”.
Professor Nicholson – known to colleagues as Mike - is a fellow and director of studies at St Catharine’s College, and director of the NIHR Blood and Transplant Research Unit in Organ Donation and Transplantation and an NIHR Senior Investigator.
A former president of the Surgical Research Society, he is noted for advancing renal normothermic machine perfusion, a preservation technique that keeps donor organs functioning outside the body to assess viability and extend preservation time.
He received a British Transplantation Society Lifetime Achievement Award in 2022 and the European Society of Transplantation Legacy Award for Sustained and Outstanding Achievement in 2023.
The same year Kidney Research UK announced a new set of grants named after Professor Nicholson specifically aimed at those transforming transplantation to ensure organs last longer and are available to more patients.
Professor Nicholson said:
While I am truly honoured to receive an OBE, transplantation is a team effort, and it reflects the hard work and dedication of all colleagues. Of course, we should never forget that the real heroes here are the donors themselves, and their families.
Professor Michael Nicholson, OBE
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