CONSULTANT urologist Christopher Eden was rewarded in the Healthy Community category for his pioneering work for the North Hampshire NHS trust.

Mr Eden has revolutionised the way prostate cancer is treated in the UK after he visited a fellow consultant in Paris in January 2000. Mr Eden has spent the last four years working on the less invasive, keyhole surgery, and was the first to practise it in this country.

His work has helped more than 300 people from both the local area and those who travel to his private practice at The Hampshire Clinic in Basingstoke. There are still only two other centres in the UK that carry out the treatment and Mr Eden's success figures are nearly three times better than for open surgery.

He told The Gazette that although he had brought the surgery to Hampshire, the staff who helped him in theatre and post operation should also be praised.

He said: "This is really winning as part of a team rather than me on my own. It's not a virtuoso performance when I operate, it's a team effort - the anaesthetists, scrub nurses and ward nurses, everyone who helps to allow this operation to happen."

Mr Eden also believes the patients he has treated have played a major role in the success of the operation.

He said: "The patients themselves have shown a remarkable amount of trust over the last four years for what is a relatively new procedure. They had to take a leap of faith and time has shown that that faith has been rewarded."

Article first published on Thursday, April 1, 2004