Dr. Zand van Tulleken

That's me, Dr. Zond, and we have just finished recording an interview with Professor Christiana Gordon.

She's a consultant in dermatology and lymphovascular medicine and clinical lead at the National Lymphedema Clinic.

Well, as always on social media, there's a sort of little kernel of truth.

You know, I suppose the kernel of truth is your lymphatic system is important, but anything to do with the lymphatic system, it is not the place to go.

Well, that's right.

Now, in Doctor's Notes, we're going to talk further about what happens when the lymphatic system breaks down.

We're going to talk about how Christiana got into not just this line of work, but how she's one of the first people to develop this as a new medical discipline and her work on the genetic causes and the possible future treatments for what is currently an incurable condition.

How do you get to be the first doctor to qualify in a new specialty of lymphovascular medicine?

Like, how does it exist before you do it?

If you're the expert in it, how does it exist before you have the qualification?

But not until now, but now people are going to be listening to this and switching specialty.

Talk to us about, you know, if you have an incurable condition, you've been coming to the same hospital, seeing the same doctor potentially for a lot of your life.

That's obviously a very special, meaningful kind of care, but has huge social and psychological implications for the patients.

Are the eyelashes a problem as well?

You need an observant doctor for that, don't you?

You're very, very pleased.

I mean, I imagine that when you diagnosed the patient, they had never heard of this and didn't know what was going on and didn't quite understand why you were so excited.

For them, that is a life changing diagnosis because you will be able to keep an eye on them for all sorts of other problems.

Oh, that's so brilliant, Christiana.

That's amazing.