Miss Maria Athanasiadou

Miss Maria Athanasiadou is a Consultant Plastic Surgeon specialising in skin cancer surgery, Mohs surgery, scar revision, and plastic and reconstructive surgery of the face and body.

• Consultant Plastic, Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgeon
• FRCS (Plast) – Intercollegiate Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons in Plastic Surgery. The UK specialist examination in plastic surgery, taken at the end of higher surgical training.
• EBOPRAS – European Board of Plastic, Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgery. A European specialist qualification in plastic surgery, awarded by examination.
• Specialist in Plastic Surgery, Hellenic Ministry of Health. Her Greek specialist qualification. Together with EBOPRAS and FRCS (Plast), this makes her triple-qualified in plastic surgery.
• GMC Specialist Register for Plastic Surgery. Listing on the General Medical Council’s Specialist Register confirms that she has completed the training, qualifications and assessments required to practise as a Consultant Plastic Surgeon in the UK.
• Mohs surgeon. Trained in Mohs micrographic surgery and a member of the Mohs department at The Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust.
• NHS base. The Dudley Group NHS Foundation Trust (Russells Hall Hospital).

Miss Athanasiadou is a Consultant Plastic Surgeon whose practice centres on skin cancer, from prevention and early detection to removal and reconstruction, the surgical treatment of scars and aesthetic surgery. She is fellowship-trained in microsurgery, facial plastic surgery and skin oncology, and is one of a small number of plastic surgeons in the UK trained in Mohs micrographic surgery.

What Miss Athanasiadou does at Midland Skin

• Mohs surgery – microscopically controlled removal of basal cell and squamous cell skin cancers, with reconstruction of the wound
• Scar revision surgery – re-excision, Z-plasty, keloid excision and contracture release, as part of Midland Skin’s scar treatment service
• Skin lesion removal – moles, birthmarks, lumps and bumps, cysts and lipomas
• Plastic surgery procedures – such as otoplasty, split ear lobe correction and lip lift

Mohs surgery

Miss Athanasiadou is a member of the NHS Mohs department at The Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust and brings her expertise to Midland Skin. Mohs surgery removes the skin cancer layer by layer, with each layer checked under the microscope, so the cancer is fully cleared while as much healthy skin as possible is preserved. At Midland Skin, Mohs surgery is delivered by a multidisciplinary team of consultant dermatologists and surgeons who plan complex cases and reconstruction together where appropriate. Miss Athanasiadou is part of that team.

Scar revision surgery

Scar revision is a core part of Miss Athanasiadou’s work at Midland Skin. Where a scar is wide, stretched, raised, depressed, tethered or lying in the wrong direction, including abdominal, caesarean, limb and trauma scars, and keloids, surgical revision, such as re-excision of the scar, Z-plasty to change its direction and release tension, or related techniques, can improve its appearance and function.

Her scar surgery forms part of Midland Skin’s comprehensive scar treatment service, which also includes laser, injectable and other non-surgical treatments delivered by the consultant dermatology and laser team. Every patient is assessed first, and surgery is recommended only where it is the most appropriate option. Where a combination of approaches is likely to give a better result, this is planned together.

Plastic surgery procedures at Midland Skin

Procedures at Midland Skin are carried out as day cases under local anaesthetic. Alongside Mohs and scar surgery, Miss Athanasiadou’s plastic surgery work at the clinic includes reconstruction with local flaps or skin grafts where a wound cannot be closed directly, ear correction and other ear procedures, and lip lift.

Training

Miss Athanasiadou was born and raised in Greece. She began her medical studies at Semmelweis University in Budapest and obtained her medical degree from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. After two years of core surgical training she moved to the UK in 2007 to train in plastic surgery.

She spent two years at Selly Oak Hospital in Birmingham as part of the plastic surgery team treating service personnel with extensive injuries from military combat, followed by a year at University Hospital Coventry and Warwickshire and four years on the plastic surgery training programme at University Hospitals Birmingham.

She then completed three fellowships: in microsurgery at Ghent University Hospital, Belgium, with the team led by Professor Phillip Blondeel; in facial plastic surgery at the Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam; and in skin oncology at University Hospitals Birmingham.

She holds specialist qualifications in plastic surgery from the Hellenic Ministry of Health, the European Board of Plastic, Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgery (EBOPRAS) and the Royal College of Surgeons (FRCS (Plast)).

Experience

Miss Athanasiadou holds a substantive NHS consultant post at The Dudley Group NHS Foundation Trust, where her practice centres on skin cancer: prevention, early detection, removal and reconstruction. She also performs sentinel lymph node biopsies and lymphadenectomies (lymph node removal), and is part of the abdominal wall reconstruction multidisciplinary team at Russells Hall Hospital.

She is a Mohs surgeon and a member of the Mohs department at The Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust.

As a plastic surgeon she is trained across the full range of aesthetic surgery, with a special interest in facial aesthetics, including facelift, neck lift, brow lift and eyelid surgery. Her wider practice includes breast reduction, uplift and augmentation, abdominoplasty, arm and thigh lifts, ear correction, scar revision and mole removal. This breadth means she can help patients who have more than one concern and plan treatment as a whole.

Additional information

• Teaching. She is a GMC-registered Educational Supervisor for plastic surgery trainees in the West Midlands and teaches on FRCS (Plast) preparation courses, helping the next generation of plastic surgeons through their final specialist examination.
• Research. She was Principal Investigator at The Dudley Group NHS Foundation Trust for the NIHR-funded HEALS2 trial, which is investigating whether compression therapy speeds the healing of wounds left to heal on their own after removal of skin cancers on the lower leg.
• Outside work. She is a keen yogini, plays tennis and pickleball, and loves travelling.