Mr Alistair Phillips

I have had four operations of my own; hand, shoulder, knee and ankle. The hand surgery was career-threatening and the recovery did not go to plan.

Everything is fine now but when you tell me your hand wakes you at three in the morning, or that you have started dropping things, or that you are quietly terrified about what an operation will do to your job, I am not nodding politely. I once sat where you are sitting now.

That is why my practice looks the way it does.

I will try hard not to operate on you. Most hand, wrist, elbow and shoulder problems settle without surgery. I would rather offer you a splint, a properly given injection, PRP made from your own blood or simply the
right advice and some time. I will tell you honestly when an operation is the
wrong answer, and just as honestly when it is the right one.

When you do need surgery, I make it small and quick. I do carpal tunnel release, trigger finger, cubital tunnel, Dupuytren's, ganglions
and tennis elbow under local anaesthetic in a clinic room, not a main operating
theatre. No general anaesthetic. No fasting from midnight. No hospital gown. The clinic room is not a shortcut: I helped write the national guidance for doing this safely and contributed to the standard textbook on wide awake hand surgery. For carpal tunnel I use an ultrasound scan to guide the release through a cut of about 5mm. You arrive, we numb your hand, and twenty minutes
later it is done. I am one of the most experienced surgeons in the country in
ultrasound-guided hand surgery and I teach the technique to other surgeons as
faculty.

The injection is the bit patients fear most, so I have spent years refining it: buffered anaesthetic, paediatric needles, warmed solutions and a dozen other small things. Patients regularly tell me it did not hurt.
That is the whole point.

If sport matters to you, I want to know how you got hurt. I have played sport all my life and I still do, so my first questions are about
technique: how you grip, how you load the joint, what changed in your training.
I would rather get you back in a way that hurts less and keeps you out of my clinic than patch you up and wave you off.

You should not have to take my word for how well I explain things. My patient information carries the PIF TICK, the UK's only
independently assessed quality mark for health information. Very few individual
surgeons hold it. I do, because a decision about your body is yours to make and you cannot make it on half the story. You will leave knowing what is wrong, what your choices are, what each involves and what happens if you do nothing at all.

Most questions turn up after the appointment, often at night. My patients can message me directly with whatever is worrying them, and the answer comes from me, usually within 24 hours. I have watched anxiety make pain worse and recovery slower; answering them is part of the treatment.

More than 300 patients have reviewed me on Doctify. I would rather you read them than read me.

I treat all hand conditions including: carpal tunnel syndrome, trigger finger and thumb,
thumb base arthritis, finger arthritis, Dupuytren's disease, ganglions and lumps in the hand, tennis and golfer's elbow, cubital tunnel and wrist pain, plus fractures and injuries of the hand, wrist and elbow.

For shoulders, I treat most causes of pain without surgery,
including impingement, smaller rotator cuff tears, arthritis at the end of the collarbone and the bone wear weight training can cause there. I do not do planned shoulder operations; if you need one I will say so straight away and point you to the right surgeon. I do fix shoulder girdle injuries, including broken collarbones.

If any of this sounds familiar, you do not need to have decided anything before you come in. That is what the appointment is for. You will get an honest set of options, and if you ask me which one I would choose
if it were my hand, I will tell you.