Training and education

Basic surgical training - Wales, Northamptonshire and the West Midlands
Higher surgical training in urology - Scotland
Fellowships - India and France

Experience

Prof Somani is a world renowned endourologist and a high-volume surgeon. He has performed more than 2000 ureteroscopy procedures (surgery to treat kidney stones). His outcomes show a stone-free rate of 96% and a minor complication rate of 4%, with nearly 80% of patients being able to go home on the same day as their surgery.

Prof Somani is also the clinical director of the south coast regional lithotripsy services (a treatment that uses shock waves to break down kidney stones). More than 2,500 procedures have been carried out under his supervision since 2012. He is also the Editor in Chief of Journal of Clinical Urology, the official journal of British Association of Urological Surgeons (BAUS).

His main clinical interests are:

benign prostate disorders and interventions for them (TURP, Rezum, PAE, Urolift and lasers)
simple and complex urinary tract infections (vaccines, D-Mannose, intravesical antibiotics)
kidney and bladder stone disease
haematuria (blood in urine)
general urology (circumcision, scrotal procedures)

Prof Somani has recently started using a new laser technique called 'pop-dusting' to remove kidney stones. You can read about this technique here and watch a video on YouTube that shows how it works.

Prof Somani has developed a portfolio of activities to raise public awareness of the symptoms, prevention and treatment of kidney stones, including appearing on BBC Radio 4's Inside Health programme, BBC South television and ITV Meridian News. You can watch Prof Somani's recent interview about kidney stone disease on the ITV Meridian website.

Key achievements

Listed as number one surgeon in the world for ureteroscopy (laser stone) and PCNL (keyhole percutaneous stone) procedures
Southampton listed as number one in Europe for kidney stone treatment
Wessex Clinical Research Network (CRN) and simulation lead for urology
Performing live surgery and chairing conferences/courses in several countries including Portugal, Spain, Romania, Greece, Italy, India, Kosovo, China, Poland, Moldova, Germany, Abu Dhabi, Austria, Denmark and UK
Coordinator of largest simulation hands-on-training programme in the world - EUREP (European urology residents' education programme) – for prostate surgery, laparoscopic surgery and ureteroscopy
President – PETRA group (Progress in Endourology, Technology and Research Association)
President - I-TRUE group (International Training and Research in Uro-Oncology and Endourology)
Course director – Urology Global Residents I-TRUE Postgraduate Programme (UROGRIPP).

Awards and prizes

Best paper - British Association of Urological Surgeons (BAUS) Endourology annual meeting 2021
‘Zenith Global Health Award’ – Surgical specialities special recognition award - 2021
‘Golden Cystoscope’ award by British Association of Urological Surgeons for 2021
‘Arthur Smith Endourology award’ by Endourological Society– 1^st and only surgeon from UK to win this award, 2020
Best paper – Annual BAUS meeting, Endourology paper for the year.
Honorary Fellowship (FRCS) given from Royal college of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow, 2020
Winner – clinical research award: EAU section of urolithiasis (EULIS), 2019
Winner - Unity 101 annual community award, Southampton, 2020
Winner – best paper in the literature award: EAU section of urolithiasis (EULIS), 2017
Joint winner- ‘NHS emerging leader’ (Thames Valley and Wessex region, 2015)
Finalist - ‘NHS innovation award’ (Thames Valley and Wessex region, 2014)
Royal Society of Medicine (RSM) urology section – prizes (2013, 2014, 2016, 2020, 2021, 2022)

Positions held (national and international)

Elected member - BAUS executive academic committee (2016-2018), endourology committee (2019-2021).
NICE specialist advisor for interventional procedures and ‘invited expert’ for urological infections guidelines
European Association of Urology (EAU) live surgery committee member
EAU urolithiasis guidelines panel member
EAU undergraduate panel member
EAU section of Uro-Technology (ESUT) Endourology member
Endourological society UK representative
European School of Urology (ESU) Training and Research group
Endourology society TOWER research group.

Research

Mr Somani has published over 500 peer reviewed papers, 400 published conference papers/abstracts and eight book chapters. He is on the editorial board of four journals and a reviewer for 15 journals (including British, American and European urological journals). He is also the head of field for urology on the BMedSc research course at Southampton.

Benign prostate hyperplasia (BPH)

Prof Somani has published extensively (25 papers) on minimally invasive benign prostate treatments including TURP, prostate artery embolization (PAE), UroLift (prostate stapling), Rezum (prostate steam), Aquablation (robotic prostate surgery) and laser prostate surgery (HoLEP, ThuVEP).

Kidney and bladder stones

Prof Somani is one of the most published surgeons in the world with primary and secondary research in prevention and treatment of stone disease.

Urinary tract infections (UTIs)

Prof Somani has published research (17 papers) on simple and complex UTIs, including use of vaccines (Uromune), sugar (D-Mannose) and bladder instillation of antibiotics.

Haematuria (blood in urine)

Prof Somani has published research (10 papers) on haematuria and its management.

You can find a full list of his publications on PubMed.