Mr Tom Pollard Consultant Hip Surgeon

Mr Tom Pollard is a Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon specialising in hip surgery and hip conditions. He is a highly accomplished surgeon performing over 300 hip arthroscopies and over 250 hip replacements each year. He has a keen interest in young adult hip conditions and is one of the UK’s most experienced surgeons using the latest technology to achieve the best possible outcome for patients.

Peers, both locally and nationally, regularly refer to him for hip arthroscopy. He is a world-renowned specialist in young adult hip problems and his groundbreaking research has been recognised on a global scale after he received two of the International Society for Hip Arthroscopy's annual awards in New York and Paris. He has expanded the understanding of how hips fail in young adults and how they should be studied and treated by authoring many of the most important articles in the field of young adult hip surgery.

He is very passionate about his patients' return to sport and encourages them to remain active after surgery, championing our Rapid Recovery Programme. Many of his arthroplasty (joint replacement surgery) patients return to sports like running, racquet sports, and skiing after surgery.

He graduated in medicine from the University of Bristol. At the University of Oxford, he earned his medical doctorate (MD) by writing a thesis on the causes, investigation, and treatment of early hip osteoarthritis and later held the distinguished position of Clinical Lecturer in Orthopaedic and Trauma Surgery. He gained his Fellowship at the Royal Berkshire Hospital in Reading, where he joined the trust as a permanent Consultant in 2012 and started in private practice.

He received a level 2 Clinical Excellence award in recognition of his service to the NHS and was appointed Clinical Director of the Department of Orthopaedic and Trauma Surgery at the Royal Berkshire Hospital in February 2017. During the Covid pandemic, he successfully led a department of 21 orthopaedic surgeons to be one of the first in the UK to begin elective surgery and the approach he established to do so safely was published for other hospitals to follow.

He is an extremely popular lecturer and teacher on hip arthroscopy courses in the UK and internationally. He trains Fellows in hip arthroscopy as part of a Smith & Nephew-sponsored fellowship programme based at the Royal Berkshire Hospital. He allows consultant surgeons to check his hip arthroscopy skills in person by participating in a visiting surgeon programme.