Mr Thomas Ember, Consultant Orthopaedic and Spinal Surgeon
Mr Thomas Ember
Consultant Orthopaedic and Spinal Surgeon
Mr Thomas Ember MBBS MRCS (Lon&Glas) FRCS (Tr&Orth)
Consultant Orthopaedic and Spinal Surgeon
Mr Thomas Ember
Consultant Orthopaedic and Spinal Surgeon MBBS MRCS (Lon&Glas) FRCS (Tr&Orth)
Mr Ember is a recommended Consultant Orthopaedic and Spinal Surgeon
Recommendations for Mr Ember
These recommendations are for information purposes only. Doctors providing recommendations do so in good faith and are not responsible for clinical outcomes.
Recommended by:
byMr Stephen Davies, Physiotherapist
❝Mr Thomas Ember makes the right choice for his patients at the time. We've shared a lot of complex patients together, whether it's intervention through imagery and potential injection, has allowed for appropriate conservative care which has eventually led to a true revolution in the patient symptoms. However, when appropriate, a surgical option has been completed.❞
byMr Stephen Davies, Physiotherapist
❝Mr Thomas Ember makes the right choice for his patients at the time. We've shared a lot of complex patients together, whether it's intervention through imagery and potential injection, has allowed for appropriate conservative care which has eventually led to a true revolution in the patient symptoms. However, when appropriate, a surgical option has been completed.❞
About Mr Thomas Ember
Mr Tom Ember is a highly qualified Consultant Orthopaedic and Spinal Surgeon, currently serving at Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust and Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children. He completed his medical degree at St George's Hospital Medical School, University of London, and further honed his expertise with specialist training at The Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital in Stanmore. His advanced Spinal Fellowship was undertaken at both Great Ormond Street Hospital and The Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital.
Mr Ember specialises in a wide range of spinal procedures and techniques. His areas of expertise include injection therapies such as epidural, nerve root injections, facet joint blocks, and CT guided cervical nerve root injections. He is also proficient in facet joint denervation, vertebroplasty, and kyphoplasty. His surgical skills extend to microdiscectomy, lumbar spinal fusion, cervical fusion, and disc replacement. Mr Ember is adept in minimal access surgery and less invasive surgery techniques, utilising advanced tools like the operating microscope and spinal navigation systems. He is also experienced in vascular access surgeon assisted anterior spinal surgery and robot assisted spinal surgery.
Appointed as a consultant in 2010, Mr Ember has dedicated over a decade to providing exceptional care to his patients. His commitment to advancing medical practices and improving patient outcomes is evident in his continuous pursuit of innovative surgical techniques and procedures.
Areas of expertise
- Back pain
- Cervical (neck) surgery
- Complex spinal disorders
- Degenerative disc disease
- Discectomy
- Epidural
- Facet joint injection
- Herniated disc or slipped disc
- Kyphoplasty
- Lower back pain
- Lumbar back surgery
- Minimally invasive spinal surgery
- Nerve root injection
- Paediatric (pediatric) orthopaedic surgery
- Revision surgery
- Sciatica
- Sciatica surgery
- Scoliosis
- Scoliosis surgery
- Spinal decompression
- Spinal deformity
- Spinal deformity correction
- Spinal fusion
- Spinal stenosis
- Spinal surgery
- Spine fracture surgery
- Spine fractures and trauma
- Spine tumours and infections
- Spondylolisthesis & spondylolysis
- Sports-related spine injuries
- Stress fractures
- Thoracic (back) surgery
- Upper back pain
- Vertebral compression fracture
Frequently asked questions
Why did you decide to become a Consultant Orthopaedic and Spinal Surgeon ?
I do adult and children's spinal surgery. I'm very lucky to get the opportunity to work with kids and their families, but also to see adult patients with spinal problems. Spinal surgery includes a range of diagnostic challenges, which allows us to be very involved in state of the art imaging techniques, and the surgery is very technology based. It's very comparable to Formula One in that we're always constantly striving to improve techniques in the operating theatre suite with things like navigation systems, which very much appeals to my way of working. And I very much enjoy being able to improve people's quality of life, particularly for the kids with scoliosis, but also improving back and leg problems, which can be severely incapacitating to adult patients.
What are the common symptoms that your patients tend to present with?
There are two distinct groups. In a children's clinic, the kids are mainly presenting with curvatures of their spine, so they or a parent or maybe a sports teacher might have noticed an asymmetry developing in their backs. That will then be a consultation driven by obtaining appropriate imaging, which usually starts with x-rays to define whether or not they've developed a curve and to quantify the curve, which will drive treatment choices. Whereas in the adult group, it's more typically presented with spinal pain, which can be neck pain, middle back pain, thoracic back pain, or lower back pain, and nerve type pains which may be into the arm or the leg as a form of sciatica.
What are the treatments that you're able to offer your patients?
We have the full range of diagnostics available to us, ranging at the most basic from plain x-rays, including access to the EOS x-ray suite at the The Portland Hospital, which is ultra low dose x-rays for kids and scoliosis. There are multiple MRI scans available around London HCA sites, so we can obtain MRI scan imaging rapidly. We have CT imaging, bone scan, SPECT-CT imaging, PET scan imaging. So the entire range of imaging modalities is available to us through London Bridge and its sister hospitals.
What are your areas of sub-specialist interest?
My main practice within the NHS is paediatric spinal surgery, which is treating children with scoliosis and kyphosis, which are curvatures of the spine that develop in teenage years. My adult practice includes all conditions of all spinal pathologies from the neck down to the lower back, including disc related problems within the neck and the lumbar spine, sciatica, spinal stenosis, tumours, infections and injuries to the spine, both soft tissue and bony.
