Mr Ben Challacombe

Ben is a consultant urological surgeon with a special interest in the minimally invasive treatments of prostatic diseases. He is the Guy’s & St Thomas’ MDM urological cancer and clinical robotics lead, a UK robotic surgery mentor and robotic fellowship director. He trained at Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospitals, The Royal Marsden Hospital and with Professor Tony Costello at the Royal Melbourne Hospital, where he was awarded the prestigious Rowan Nicks Fellowship from the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons. He is currently the British Association of Urology (BAUS) Oncology Section Chairman and in 2019 will be awarded the BAUS Golden Cystoscope for contributions to British urology within 10 years of consultant appointment.

He has learnt both laparoscopic and robotic surgical approaches and performed the first randomised trial of telerobotics between Guy’s and Johns Hopkins Hospitals, in 2002. This formed part of his Master of Surgery thesis on robotic surgery and telemedicine. Ben is associate editor of the BJUI, with over 230 peer-reviewed publications, 3 books, and 25 book chapters on minimally invasive and robotic urological techniques.

He has performed over 1000 robotic radical prostatectomies and over 1100 robotic upper tract procedures including 560 robotic partial nephrectomies and also performs holmium laser prostatectomy (HoLEP) with an experience of over 900 cases. He has also helped to develop both the robotic cystectomy and robotic partial nephrectomy programmes at Guy’s Hospital and is the highest volume surgeon for both robotic partial nephrectomy and upper tract robotics in the UK. His current research interests are in robotic surgery training, trans-perineal template biopsy techniques, active surveillance of low risk prostate cancer, sentinel node techniques and haptic probe development in robotic surgery.

Ben is a Trustee of The Urology Foundation Charity, for whom he regularly lectures, and is fortunate to have a very supportive surgical wife and three energetic boys