ALMOST £1 million in research grants has been allocated to funding the next generation of surgical researchers, in what the UK’s oldest surgical royal college has described as one of its most important annual investments.

The Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh (RCSEd) has awarded grants ranging from bursaries for junior medics to major fellowship awards involving some of the country’s leading medical researchers and institutions to improve patient treatments.

Professor Stephen Wigmore, chair of the RCSEd research committee, said supporting research and innovation in surgery is one of the College’s core activities for its membership.

“Supporting high quality surgical research is essential if we are to make progress in our quest to provide better treatment for our patients,” he said.

“We are committed to delivering results that will, ultimately, improve and save lives.”

Grants of £996,164 will aid research in areas such as cancer, orthopaedic surgery and urology, as well as continuing successful partnerships with Royal Blind, which is leading innovations in ophthalmological care.

The RCSEd has been growing its research partnerships at a steady rate with some of the UK’s leading medical research charities and hopes to launch its first Research Chair in Colorectal Cancer Surgery in the next two years – a first for the college and Scotland.

Former president Michael Lavelle-Jones, whose period of office covered the 2016-2018 research report, which detailed the grants, added: “The

future of our research programme is exciting.

“Partnership working is allowing us to undertake more ambitious work that will have a national impact in the longer term.

“We are looking to work with major medical research charities to grow surgical research from the periphery and place it at the heart of medical research agendas nationwide.

“This innovative approach to working together is in all our interests and will leave a lasting legacy of treatments that will transform lives.”

The college embeds research as a key part of surgical training, believing it is a core part of making surgeons more curious and engaged with the medical conditions they are trying to treat.

It plays a vital role in encouraging surgeons in training to see the value of research and in enabling them to develop their clinical research skills by providing the necessary funding.

The RCSEd can trace its roots back to July 1505, from which it has grown into a global network of medical professionals. It now has almost 25,000 members, who live and work in more than 100 countries around the world.