Dr Michael Mendall

I have been a consultant gastroenterologist for 20 years. I graduated from Cambridge University and the Middlesex Hospital Medical School and undertook a variety of training jobs within London. I was a senior registrar at St George's Medical School. I lead the gastroenterology and large inflammatory bowel disease service at Croydon University Hospital.

To date I have performed approximately 10,000 colonoscopies, 15,000 gastroscopies, 3,000 ERCPs, 350 oesophageal pH studies, 300 video capsule endoscopy examinations.

I continue to actively research and have more than 100 publications and have collaborations throughout the world. I have published in many areas of gastroenterology including dyspepsia, reflux disease, irritable bowel, inflammatory bowel disease, oesophageal, stomach and bowel cancer, Barrett's oesophagus and fatty liver disease. I am expert in interventional endoscopy and colonoscopy and other advanced therapeutic endoscopic procedures including ERCP, oesophageal and gastro-intestinal stenting, video capsule endoscopy, and oesophageal manometry and pH studies.

I am currently lead for gastroenterology at Croydon University Hospital. This is a rapidly growing department and has the only unconditionally JAG accredited unit for the next five years in south London following a recent inspection. I also lead the Inflammatory Bowel Disease service and the trust mortality review process. I am a member of the Upper GI Cancer of the National Clinical Intelligence Network and am the London Representative for the British Society of Gastroenterology and sit on the Clinical Standards Committee.

I am an honorary Senior Lecturer at St George's Medical School.

I have made a number of important and internationally recognised contributions to the understanding of gastroenterological and other diseases. I was the first to show that Helicobacter pylori infection of the stomach is mainly caught in childhood, one of the first to demonstrate that many cardiovascular risk factors are manifestations of inflammation, the first to study the role of antibiotics in irritable bowel syndrome, the first to demonstrate how many lifestyle risk factors for colon cancer affect bowel inflammation which is probably the mechanism through which they act.

More recently I was the first to demonstrate that obesity plays a causal role in some types of Crohn's disease which has been replicated by other international studies. I have written extensively on the role of diet in Crohn's disease.