Personal Profile
Mr Richard Sutton is a Consultant Breast Surgeon specialising in oncoplastic, reconstructive and cosmetic breast surgery at Bath Clinic. He also holds a substantive NHS consultant post at the Royal United Hospital (RUH) in Bath and was appointed in 2003.
Mr Sutton qualified from St Bartholomew’s medical school in London in 1990 and undertook the majority of his surgical training in London and gained valuable experience working in many of the prestigious teaching hospitals: including Barts and the Royal London, Hammersmith, Charing Cross and the Chelsea & Westminster hospitals. He gained much of his breast surgical training at the Royal Marsden hospital and continues to maintain strong links with colleagues there.
He undertook an international fellowship in surgical oncology at the Royal Adelaide hospital in South Australia and completed training with a fellowship post in oncoplastic breast surgery: this is an innovative national program to train breast and plastic surgeons in complex surgical techniques in breast surgery; in particular for reconstructive breast surgery.
These training posts are limited in number such that the application process was highly competitive. Mr Sutton’s fellowship was based in the Department of Plastic Surgery in Broomfield hospital, Chelmsford.
In Bath, Mr Sutton has developed a comprehensive service for oncoplastic and breast reconstructive surgery and he is now the Clinical Director for the Breast Unit at the Royal United hospital. In addition to this he also undertakes a large number of cosmetic breast surgical procedures, including breast reduction, breast uplift (mastopexy), breast enlargement (augmentation), correction of inverted nipples as well as surgery to correct developmental breast asymmetry. As well as cosmetic surgery for the female breast, Mr Sutton provides surgery for gynaecomastia (male breast tissue enlargement) as well as abdominoplasty (‘tummy tuck’) procedures.
He’s actively involved with research into improving outcomes for breast cancer treatment, being the lead clinician at the RUH for a number of multi centre national research trials and has an increasing commitment to surgical training at a local, regional and national level. Mr Sutton has been on the teaching faculty for a number of national and international courses in oncoplastic & reconstructive breast surgery. Since 2012 he’s been the course director for the Speciality Skills Course in Reconstructive Breast Surgery (level 1) at the Royal College of Surgeons in London.
Mr Sutton is an adviser for Breast Cancer Care UK, a leading national breast cancer charitable organisation and has helped to develop their patient information tools, with respect to breast reconstructive surgery and physiotherapy exercises after breast cancer surgery.