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About me

Dr Matthew Rooney is an experienced consultant anaesthetist based in the West Midlands. He provides anaesthesia for vascular, gynaecology, general, orthopaedic and Ear Nose and Throat surgery as well as paediatric anaesthesia for children. He holds a current European Paediatric Advanced Life Support (EPALS) certificate.
He graduated in medicine from Newcastle in 1986 and trained in anaesthesia at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Nottingham and Birmingham.
He was appointed a consultant anaesthetist at the Heart of England Foundation Trust in Birmingham in 1997. He has held several roles including being the lead consultant for audit, critical incidents, ophthalmic anaesthesia and IT. He has produced guidelines to minimize post-operative nausea and vomiting and run for example collaborative audit projects with surgeons on mortality and risk stratification. He cares for many of the elderly patients requiring emergency general and orthopaedic surgery. He has a particular interest in using oesophageal Doppler monitoring to optimize the heart in the critically sick emergency surgical patients. He anaesthetises children.
His typical practice includes many patients having complex vascular surgery, elective laparoscopic general and gynaecology surgery, orthopaedic, eye and day surgery. He flexibly covers most other specialties. He regularly uses techniques that combine rapid and enhanced recovery from surgery with minimal post-operative pain and nausea. This is achieved by regularly using pre-operative analgesia, local anaesthetic infiltration before venous cannulation, and carefully matching general and regional anaesthesia to the surgery and the patient. He can provide advanced sedation methods that combine rapid control of anxiety and analgesia with fast return to normal activity.
He works regularly in the independent sector particularly in particularly in vascular surgery, general surgery, orthopaedic surgery and gynaecology.
During his professional career he has developed a disposable device for instant assessment of anaemia and databases to manage critical incidents, departmental information and personalized outcome reports for anaesthetists. He regularly lectures to anaesthetists in training on subjects including statistics, physics and pharmacology. He is a member of the Association of Anaesthetists of Great Britain and Ireland, the Vascular Anaesthetic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, the Ophthalmic Anaesthetists Society and a previous secretary of the Society of Computing and Technology in Anaesthesia. He has also worked with industry in helping to develop medical technologies through his involvement with Healthtech and Innovations Factory.
He was the Chief Clinical Information Officer for the Heart of England Foundation Trust until merger with the Queen Elizabeth Hospital and is currently working with making other hospitals information available at the point of care.
He is married to Alison and has five children spread over 16 years. In his spare time he likes dog-walking, cycling, DIY and tinkering with technology.

Areas of interest

Vascular anaesthesia including endovascular thoracoabdominal aortic aneurysm repairs; Orthopaedic anaesthesia; Ophthalmic anaesthesia; Gynaecological anaesthesia; Laparoscopic surgery anaesthesia