Mrs Ritchie Chalmers

Mrs Chalmers read Medicine at Keble College in Oxford and undertook clinical training at the John Radcliffe Hospital. She trained as a general surgeon with an interest in breast cancer surgery in Leeds, London and the South East and subsequently undertook a Fellowship in Oncoplastic Surgery at the Canniesburn Unit in Glasgow.

This combined training has allowed her to offer techniques to preserve the breast wherever possible and to reconstruct the breast in the event of mastectomy.

Ritchie was awarded a National Clinical Research Training Fellowship by the Medical Research Council (MRC) for original research leading to her PhD and has presented her research internationally on several occasions. She has published both in peer-reviewed journals and written textbooks for surgical training. She teaches surgeons in training on the national ABS Breast Reconstruction courses and is a part of the faculty for the MSc in Oncoplastic Surgery. In addition to her training in the UK, Ritchie has spent time working abroad in South Africa and later as a general surgeon in Central America.

Ritchie has been a Consultant at Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust since 2013 and currently also works as the Lead Cancer Clinician for the Trust.

She has a specialist interest in all aspects of breast disease, both malignant and benign, and has additional interests in revisional breast surgery as well as providing symmetry after breast cancer treatment. She is particularly interested avoiding mastectomy where possible by using advanced breast conserving surgery (therapeutic mammoplasty and local flaps) and in immediate breast reconstruction either using implants or using one’s own tissue without implants, when mastectomy is required. She has an interest in using lipofilling (fat grafting) to improve reconstructive outcomes after previous radiotherapy.