Profile of Professor Andrew Carr
Prof Andrew Carr
Nuffield Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery at the University of Oxford
- Consultant Shoulder Surgeon at the Oxford University Hospitals
- Head of the Nuffield Department of Orthopaedics, Rheumatology and Musculoskeletal Sciences
- Director of the NIHR Musculoskeletal Biomedical Research Unit
- Divisional Director: Musculoskeletal and Rehabilitation Division
Special interests: Diagnosis and treatment of shoulder pain, shoulder surgery, impingement surgery, rotator cuff repair, joint replacement and instability surgery. Research.
Andy Carr qualified from the University of Bristol in 1982 and trained in Bristol, Sheffield, Oxford and the Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne. He was a full-time Consultant NHS Surgeon in Oxford between 1992 and 2001, during which time he established a shoulder surgery unit and introduced minimally invasive shoulder surgery. In 1998 he invented the Oxford Shoulder, which is a half joint replacement and is used for a variety of different types of arthritis.
He has a number of patient-focused research interests.
Firstly, he has an interest in the design and use of patient reported outcome measures (PROMs) to assess outcome after orthopaedic surgery. The Oxford Scores focus on patients' own views of their health problems. These scores are now used internationally in clinical trials and registers, and from 2009 have been employed by all NHS Hospitals in the UK to measure the outcome of joint replacement operations.
He is particularly interested in the effect of surgery on musculoskeletal pain. He is principal investigator in an NIHR Health Technology Assessment programme funded multi-centre randomised trial of open versus arthroscopic rotator cuff repair surgery, which is the largest shoulder surgery trial ever undertaken worldwide.
Secondly his group investigates disease mechanisms in osteoarthritis and degenerate tendon tears. In the 1990s he was a group head at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics and identified a significant genetic risk in end-stage hip and knee osteoarthritis and in rotator cuff tear. He is an investigator in UK and European consortia undertaking genome wide association studies in osteoarthritis and pioneered the use of joint replacement patients in these investigations.
Thirdly, his work in degenerate tendon tears has identified inflammatory and hypoxia driven apoptotic mechanisms. He is now developing new techniques of tendon repair using bio-polymers including silk. These new materials, in conjunction with growth factors and stem cells, are aimed at iincreasing the success rate of surgical repair.
He co-founded the Botnar Research Centre (the Oxford University Institute of Musculoskeletal Sciences) which opened in 2002. The centre accommodates 100 musculoskeletal researchers from a wide variety of disciplines including engineering, epidemiology, clinical pharmacology, cell biology and genetics as well as clinical scientists from rheumatology and orthopaedics.
He is Deputy Chairman of Trustees of the Arthritis Research Campaign.
He has received a number of prizes and awards including an ABC fellowship and the Robert Jones Gold Medal from the British Orthopaedic Association. In 2009 he was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences.
Professor Carr was appointed Divisional Director of Musculoskeletal and Rehabilitation, Oxford University Hospitals, in November 2011.
Many of the hospital consultants work with the University of Oxford's Nuffield Department of Orthopaedics, Rheumatology and Musculoskeletal Sciences (NDORMS) on clinical trials and research studies, investigating a wide range of diseases of the musculoskeletal system. For information on Mr Carr's research studies and publications please visit the NDORMS website.