Tony Cheesman trained as an otolaryngologist and his first steps in skull base surgery were taken in the lateral skull base. He realised that the window craniotomy used for access to the floor of the middle fossa could also be used in the anterior fossa. As his other major interest was head and neck malignancies, he started to use the small window craniotomy to access the cribriform plate and the roof of the ethmoid sinuses for those nasal malignancies that breached the skull base. This resulted in dramatic improvements in cure rates and he and his colleagues developed and modified the approaches used for craniofacial resection. This resulted in a well-documented series of craniofacial resections leading to the wide adoption of this approach for nasal tumours encroaching the anterior skull base.He frequently collaborated with neurosurgical colleagues giving him a wide experience of all tumours of the skull base. He was continually active in teaching and with Alan Crockard started the hands-on Skull Base Surgery Course at the Royal College of Surgeons in London. He has subsequently lectured and taught Skull Base Surgery worldwide.
He was active in organising this new multidisciplinary specialty. In 1988 he was a founder member of the International Skull Base Society, and this subsequently morphed into the World Federation of Skull Base Societies. As its Honorary Secretary for eight years, he was active in formulating a constitution that was acceptable to the various specialties and resulted in a rotating International Conference every four years.He is proud to be one of the founders of Skull Base Surgery and has encouraged its development as a collaborative multidisciplinary specialty. Mr Ian Sabin is a Consultant Neurosurgeon based in London. He is the Medical Director of the London Gamma Knife Centre at the Wellington Hospital. Mr Sabin was appointed to his first post as a Consultant Neurosurgeon in 1992 at St Bartholomew's Hospital, London, after training in Edinburgh and London (Queen Square) during which he completed research into monitoring during skull base surgery. He has completed additional specialist training in Gamma Knife stereotactic radiosurgery in Pittsburgh, Stockholm, Marseille and for Cyber Knife radiosurgery in California.
HIs main surgical interest is skull base surgery, using a combination of open surgery and radiosurgery where appropriate. He was the neurosurgical tutor to the Royal College of Surgeons of England for 10 years, a member of the Court of Examiners and a member of the Specialist Advisory Committee for neurosurgery. After 38 years working in the NHS, he now works full-time in London's largest private hospital, The Wellington. Professor Ghassan Alusi is a senior consultant Otolaryngologist & Head and Neck Surgeon at Barts and The London NHS Trust, and Honorary Consultant Surgeon , University College Hospital. He has a special interest in complex skull base/sinus surgery and rhinoplasty, laryngology, complex head and neck surgery and thyroid disorders. He is an Honorary Clinical Professor at Queen Mary's School of Medicine and Dentistry where his research is in Oncology and inflammation. He is a co-director of the Head and Neck Academic Centre, UCL where he holds an honorary clinical professorship. He is involved in research into image guided surgery, for which he was awarded a PhD by Leicester University.
He has an active research programme in oncolytic viruses for the treatment of cancer and gene therapy, focusing on gene delivery and the identification of novel therapeutic options.