Mr Alex von Roon

Mr Alex von Roon is a laparoscopic and robotic colorectal surgeon with over 20 years of clinical experience in treating patients with colorectal and general surgical conditions. He has been practising as a consultant for over 10 years.

He trained in general and colorectal surgery on the London Northwest Thames training rotation. He received a research fellowship from the Royal College of Surgeons of England in 2008 and was awarded a PhD by Imperial College London in 2012. He underwent further subspecialist training in colorectal surgery in Adelaide, Australia and St Mark's Hospital before being appointed clinical senior lecturer and consultant colorectal surgeon at St Mary's and Charing Cross Hospitals in 2015. During this time, he focussed on colorectal cancer and inflammatory bowel disease surgery, became clinical lead for enhanced recovery after colorectal surgery and trained on the Senhance robotic surgery platform. In 2019, he moved to University College London Hospitals, where he continued to develop his interests in minimally invasive techniques. He transitioned from laparoscopic to robotic surgery in 2020 and acted as the implementation co-lead for the multi-specialty robotic surgery programme at UCLH. To date, he has completed over 250 robotic procedures on the daVinci platform.

His main clinical focus at present is on robotic colorectal cancer resection and robotic complex abdominal wall reconstruction, including parastomal hernia repairs. He frequently operates jointly with consultant colleagues from gynaecology and urology, supporting them in their tertiary referral practice dealing with severe endometriosis and complex urology, with increasing numbers of cases being performed robotically. He also has extensive experience of complex open re-operative surgery for inflammatory bowel disease, intestinal failure and abdominal wall reconstruction. Mr von Roon also has a clinical interest in complex fistula in ano (including Crohn’s disease) and novel treatments for common proctological conditions such as haemorrhoids and pilonidal sinus.

He is currently leading the implementation of the “Hospital at Home” programme for elective colorectal patients at UCLH. The programme enables patients to go home much earlier in their postoperative course than standard care by providing digitally enabled remote clinical monitoring of vital signs, blood tests and daily nursing support in the comfort of their own home.

Mr von Roon provides care that is informed by the latest surgical techniques, tailored to the specific needs of the individual and delivered in a sensitive manner. He believes that a minimally invasive approach should not just be applied to headline diseases like colorectal cancer and inflammatory bowel disease, but also to more straightforward conditions such as hernias, haemorrhoids, anal fistula and pilonidal sinus, where novel techniques can be very effective whilst causing less tissue trauma and pain than traditional procedures.

Mr von Roon undertook his PhD research at Imperial College in collaboration with St Mark's Hospital, focusing on outcomes of ileoanal pouch surgery for familial adenomatous polyposis and metabonomic profiling of pouchitis in ulcerative colitis. He has supervised several PhD students, both at Imperial College and in collaboration with the Polyposis Registry at St Mark's Hospital. He has an interest in evidence synthesis in inflammatory bowel disease and surgical trials. He gives lectures at international conferences on various aspects of colorectal surgery on a regular basis. He has published over 25 peer-reviewed papers in the field of colorectal surgery and is a reviewer for a number of surgical journals.