Roger Greenhalgh

Roger Malcolm Greenhalgh (6 February 1941 – 6 October 2023) was a British surgeon, researcher and educator best known for his contributions to the field of vascular surgery. He was emeritus Professor of Surgery at Imperial College London in London, England and Head of the Imperial College Vascular Surgery Research Group at the time of his death.

Greenhalgh was also the founder and chair of the Charing Cross Symposium between 1978 and 2023, and the founder and chairman of the editorial board for the European Journal of Vascular and Endovascular Surgery (EJVES) from 1987 to 2003. He played a significant role in the formation of the European Society for Vascular Surgery, and is credited with being an early adopter of the concept of large-scale, randomised clinical trials, helping to establish them as a means for evaluating surgical techniques.

Early life and education Roger M. Greenhalgh was born in Ilkeston, Derbyshire, in the East Midlands of England on February 6, 1941 to (Major) John Greenhalgh and Phyllis Poynton. At the time of his birth, Greenhalgh's father was working in the police force in Derbyshire before being recruited to military service in India early on in the Second World War.

Medical school and postgraduate training Greenhalgh was the first in his family to attend university, enrolling at Clare College, Cambridge, in 1960. Within a term of Greenhalgh arriving at Clare College, his medical tutor Gordon Wright predicted that Greenhalgh would go on to become a surgeon. Greenhalgh graduated from the University of Cambridge in 1963, before going on to achieve Doctor of Medicine (MD) and Master of Surgery (MChir) degrees, qualifying as an honorary doctor in December 1966. Greenhalgh went on to make a number of research contributions on the causes and management of aneurysmal arterial disease, including as a leading investigator for the UK Small Aneurysm Trial (UKSAT), which was the first trial to establish a size-based threshold for the open surgical repair of abdominal aortic aneurysms (AAAs) and has been supported by multiple subsequent clinical studies.

Greenhalgh was also principal investigator for the endovascular aneurysm repair (EVAR) randomised controlled trials, EVAR 1 and 2, which enrolled hundreds of patients from hospital across the United Kingdom and sought to establish the role of EVAR - a minimally invasive alternative to open surgery - in the treatment of AAAs. The most recent update from EVAR 1, which was published in The Lancet in 2016 and analysed 15-year clinical follow-up data from more than 1,200 patients, saw Greenhalgh and his fellow investigators conclude that "EVAR has an early survival benefit but an inferior late survival compared with open repair, which needs to be addressed by lifelong surveillance of EVAR and re-intervention if necessary".

Other notable trials for which Greenhalgh was a leading investigator include the Mild to Moderate Intermittent Claudication (MIMIC), Vein Graft Surveillance (VGST) and Immediate Management of the Patient With Rupture: Open Versus Endovascular Repair (IMPROVE) trials. He also spent much of his career researching the effect of tobacco smoke on the management and treatment of arterial disease. Greenhalgh has co-published more than 300 original papers spanning several areas within vascular surgery, including venous, carotid, peripheral and aortic diseases.

European Society for Vascular Surgery Citing the successful format of the Society for Vascular Surgery (SVS) in the United States, including the Journal of Vascular Surgery and national Vascular Annual Meeting that it sponsored, Greenhalgh convened the first ever meeting of the European Society for Vascular Surgery (ESVS) in April of 1987, alongside that year's CX Symposium. The European Journal of Vascular Surgery was also launched in February 1987, with Greenhalgh as Chairman of the Editorial Board for the publication. His final act in this role was to bring about changing its name to the European Journal of Vascular and Endovascular Surgery in 1993, owing to the growth of minimally invasive techniques in vascular surgery at the time.

Selected honours and awards Greenhalgh was made the first European Honorary Member of the society in 1993, and received an award in recognition of his role in the foundation of the ESVS in 2002. He was President of Surgery for the European Union of Medical Specialists from 1998 to 2002, and then President for the European Board of Vascular Surgery from 2002 to 2006. He was later also made Honorary Life President of the European Board of Vascular Surgery. Greenhalgh served as President "for the millennium" of the Vascular Surgical Society of Great Britain and Ireland from 1999 to 2000. He was also President of the European Federation of Surgical Specialties between 2004 and 2008. He was also made an honorary member of a number of vascular surgical societies around the world including the United States, Canada, Brazil, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Poland.

Personal life At the age of 16, Greenhalgh met his future wife, Karin Maria Gross, the daughter of a family colleague from Austria. Greenhalgh and Gross married in Vienna in the summer of 1964 before moving back to England, where they lived together for several decades prior to Gross' death from COVID-19 in 2020. Greenhalgh and Gross had two children, Stephen John Greenhalgh and Christina Elizabeth Greenhalgh.

Greenhalgh's role as founder and chair of the CX Symposium inspired his son Stephen to set up and launch BIBA Medical, a specialised medical news and events company, in 1994. BIBA Medical assumed the running of the CX Symposium in the late 1990s. Roger M. Greenhalgh was the company director for BIBA Medical for more than 25 years, and editor-in-chief of its longest-running publication, Vascular News, between 1999 and 2023. Greenhalgh also published his autobiography, Born to be a Surgeon, in 2011.