page_title: Clement Price Thomas
section_title: Medical career
hierarchical_section_title: Clement Price Thomas / Medical career
caption_attribution_description: Another Judges' postcard, this time from the mid 1920s showing the front of Westminster Hospital in Broad Sanctuary. The Hospital was demolished in the early 1950s after a new hospital was built in Horseferry Road, the site was used as a car park for decades although the tea stall remained for some time after demolition. It is now the site of the Queen Elizabeth II conference centre.
context_page_description: Sir Clement Price Thomas KCVO FRCS FRCP was a pioneering Welsh thoracic surgeon most famous for his 1951 operation on King George VI.
  Following a scholarship to Westminster Hospital Medical School, Price Thomas was posted to the Middle East at the onset of the First World War. He resumed his surgical training on return and was ultimately elected on to the surgical team of the hospital.
  Encouraged to pursue thoracic surgery by Tudor Edwards, Price Thomas took up, along with other posts, a thoracic surgery placement at the Royal Brompton Hospital, a specialist hospital for chest diseases. His reputation from his work on surgical techniques in pulmonary tuberculosis led to the decision that he would undertake the lung surgery on King George VI in 1951. Its success resulted in Price Thomas being appointed Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order.
  Price Thomas was elected as president to numerous significant bodies during his career, including, the British Medical Association, the Royal Society of Medicine, the Association of Thoracic Surgeons, the Thoracic Society and the Welsh National School of Medicine.
context_section_description: In 1921, after the war, Price Thomas achieved the Conjoint Board Diploma, LRCP and then in 1923, attained the FRCS (Eng). At the time, he continued to gain clinical experience at Westminster Hospital with his residential appointments and was sequentially kept as a permanent member of the clinical team there. He was introduced to thoracic surgery by Tudor Edwards, an eminent thoracic surgeon of the time, and was similarly influenced by Ernest Rock Carling and G. T. Mullally. In addition, encouragement in chest surgery came from J. E. H. Roberts, and Morriston Davies.
  As well as his responsibilities at the Westminster Hospital, Price Thomas remained the predominant chest surgeon at the Brompton Hospital. He also attended to the Army and the Royal Air Force as consultant in thoracic surgery. He became consultant at the King Edward VII Sanatorium, Midhurst, and at the Royal National Hospital for Diseases of the Chest, Ventnor. In addition, he had responsibilities at the Welsh National Memorial Association South Wales. Through his contacts and reputation, he became advisor to thoracic surgery for the Ministry of Health.
  Price Thomas had been appointed Tudor Edwards' assistant surgeon in 1932 and they performed the first case of lobectomy of the lung for bronchiectasis the same year. This was the start of a particularly close friendship over many years. It was inevitable that Price Thomas should comfortably fit into Tudor Edwards' position in thoracic surgery at Westminster hospital once Edwards resigned. Later, during a Tudor Edwards memorial lecture, Sir Russell Brock, Baron Brock commented that no-one knew Tudor Edwards better than Price Thomas.
  Price Thomas was predominantly known to operate on tuberculosis and lung tumours. He was the first surgeon to do a bronchial sleeve resection, in 1947: the operation involved removing a bronchial carcinoid tumour. The patient, whose surgery was successful, was a young flying cadet who went on to take command in the Royal Air Force. Price Thomas went on to show how a bronchial blockage from tuberculosis could be resected and the two ends of the bronchus could be sewn together, uniting in a similar way as two ends of intestine. He had his own rationale for collapse therapy of the lung and specifically of selective partial thoracoplasty with apicolysis in the treatment of tuberculosis. He was also considered to be fortunate to have one of the best anaesthetists to assist, Ivan Magill.
caption: Westminster Hospital in the mid 1920s. The hospital was demolished in the early 1950s, this is now the site of the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre.
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