Nagarajan Sudhakar

Mr Sudhakar is a Spinal Surgeon serving patients of the Devon and Cornwall region. He is one of the senior Spinal Surgery trained Neurosurgeons of the South-West of England. He is a Consultant in Plymouth at the Nuffield Health Plymouth Hospital on the private sector and at Derriford Hospital on the NHS. He has his private clinics at Plymouth, Truro and Torquay. His private surgical procedures are performed in Plymouth.

Mr Sudhakar obtained his medical qualification from the Madras University in 1988 from India. He decided to take up Neurosurgery quite early in his career and underwent a 5-year post graduate neurosurgical training at the Institute of Neurology, Madras Medical College affiliated to the Government General Hospital. He qualified in 1995 to practice as a Neurosurgeon in India.

To expand his knowledge and experience, he undertook a neurosurgical job in Swansea, UK after becoming a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. He soon joined the British training programme and underwent a 6-year Neurosurgical Training from Wales as a National Trainee. He passed his neurosurgical exit exam (FRCS SN) and completed his British training in 2003. He then underwent training for a year to treat major spinal conditions that require complex spinal procedures as a National Spinal Fellow at Leeds, one among the two centres approved by the Royal College of Surgeons at that time.

He became a Consultant at Derriford Hospital in November 2004. Since a high volume of patients with spinal pathologies, many of whom may require complex spinal surgery are being referred, almost all of his current elective practise have been devoted in treating such patients. The pathological conditions that has required special spinal procedures have been a variety of spinal fractures, infections, benign as well as malignant tumours of the spine and degenerative conditions like disc prolapse, spinal stenosis, spondylolisthesis, etc. Apart from performing simple spinal procedures for disc related disease and spinal stenosis (microdiscectomy, laminectomy etc), his complex surgical procedures include instrumented stabilisation or fusion in various parts of the spine when indicated.

He is keen on learning and performing new techniques that become available in the advancing world of spinal surgery. His current interest is to explore and serve the people of Devon and Cornwall with less invasive percutaneous procedures like Kyphoplasty for osteoporosis and other types of minimally invasive spinal surgeries, in appropriate selected cases.