Our Research

Andrew is a consultant surgeon at the Leeds Teaching Hospital Trust. He qualified at St Mary's Hospital/Imperial College Medical School, London in 1991. He was awarded a fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1995. 

Mr Smith's surgical training took place in Leicester and Nottingham. This included 2 years of research which resulted in a Doctor of Medicine thesis which was awarded with distinction. He then undertook advanced training in hepatobiliary and laparoscopic surgery by completing a fellowship at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, USA.

Mr Smith has a busy laparoscopic (keyhole) surgery practice. He performs advanced laparoscopic surgery for gallstones, abdominal wall hernias and hiatus hernias (reflux disease), and laparoscopic surgery for abdominal pain relief. In addition, he performs over 80 major pancreas resections per year for pancreatic diseases. 

He is chairman for pancreatic disease within the Yorkshire Cancer Network. He has an active research programme in benign and malignant pancreatic disease and plays an active role in medical education.

Ashley has been a consultant Hepatobiliary and Pancreatic Surgeon, University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust since 1994 and is Professor of Hepatobiliary and Pancreatic Surgery, University of Leicester.

He graduated from Sheffield University in 1977, obtained his FRCS in 1982 and his MD (Sheffield) in 1985. He was a Wellcome Research Fellow in Oxford from 1983-85, and from 1990-92 worked in Switzerland with Professor Blumgart, Paris with Professor Bismuth and Hannover with Professor Pichlmayer.

He is the chief investigator responsible for all research supervision and collaboration with external centres (national and international) and has raised over £4M for research since his appointment. He is also the lead clinician responsible for “sense checking” initiatives for service improvement and delivery. He has published over 450 peer reviewed publications, has been cited over 14,000 times, has an h-index of 59, an i-10-index of 239, written a textbook on operative techniques in liver and pancreas surgery and is editing the forthcoming new Bailey and Love comprehensive multi-author textbook on HPB surgery.

He is also the Chair of the East Midlands Clinical Senate, Chair of the Midlands Clinical Advisory Group for NHSE and past president of the Pancreatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland and the Great Britain and Ireland Hepatopancreaticobiliary Association.

His main clinical and research interests relate to the metabolism and anti-cancer properties of intravenous lipid emulsions (which recently resulted in trials in acute pancreatitis, sepsis in the intensive care setting, colorectal liver metastases and pancreatic cancer), the treatment of colorectal metastases and pancreatic adenocarcinoma and islet cell autotransplantation following total pancreatectomy for chronic pancreatitis. He has the largest experience outside the USA of pancreatectomy followed by islet cell auto-transplantation for chronic pancreatitis. 

Dr Mitchell's research mainly focuses on older people living with chronic conditions. Over the past few years he has also been involved in research projects which have examined safe-staffing in care homes, the use of digital audits in long-term care facilities and the effectiveness of non-pharmacological interventions in dementia care.

He is interested in qualitative research, particularly those with an ethnographic methodology. He has recently concluded an ethnographic project which focused on healthcare professional-patient communication about oral chemotherapy.