Professor of Thoracic Surgery at Imperial College London and a leading figure in minimally invasive lung cancer surgery — dedicated to operations that cause the least possible pain and disruption to a patient's life.
Professor Eric Lim studied medicine at the University of Sheffield and trained in cardiothoracic surgery at Papworth Hospital, Cambridge and the Royal Brompton Hospital, London.
A recipient of a UK Medical Research Council scholarship, he was awarded an MSc in Medical Statistics and a Doctorate of Medicine (MD) for surgical research. He joined the Royal Brompton Hospital in 2007 as a consultant thoracic surgeon, where he leads the academic division of thoracic surgery and the Biomedical Research Unit Cancer Consortia.
He pioneered the single-incision keyhole surgery programme for lung cancer at Royal Brompton — today the majority of his operations are performed through a single 3 cm incision, many as day-case procedures.
Professor Lim with his thoracic surgery team.
Professor Lim's translational research focuses on blood-based cancer diagnosis — circulating tumour cells and cell-free DNA/RNA — aspiring to shorten the time to diagnosis and eliminate the complications of invasive tissue biopsy.
His work on systematic reviews and clinical trials in thoracic surgery won the Society for Cardiothoracic Surgery prize for best thoracic surgery research four consecutive years (2008–2011).