Health Sciences

York Trials Unit joins Royal College of Surgeons' Surgical Trials Initiative

Posted on 25 June 2015

York Trials Unit (YTU), at the Department of Health Sciences, has joined the Royal College of Surgeons' (RCS) Surgical Trials Initiative.

The initiative aims to ensure that new surgical innovations are introduced quickly, helping to reduce regional variation in care and drive up standards.

YTU will join ongoing work in enabling surgeons to learn more about how to deal with a range of conditions, assess new surgical techniques and discover surgical breakthroughs. Currently, less than two per cent of government funding for medical research goes into surgical areas, despite the fact that one third of hospital admissions involve surgery.

The surgical trials centres, which now include YTU, have a central role in redressing this balance and helping develop the evidence base for best surgical practice.