Mr. Darren F. Lui

Areas of Expertise

Paediatric & adult spinal surgery. Scoliosis. Non fusion spinal surgery. Vertebral body tethering. Bipolar growing rods. Lumbar & cervical disc replacement. Spinal oncology: curative separation surgery or oligometastases. Robotic spinal surgery & spinal navigation. Revision spinal surgery.

About

Education & Experience

Mr. Darren F. Lui is a Spinal Surgery Consultant at Mater Private Network in Dublin and the Director of Scoliosis Surgery and Spinal Oncology. He also practices at Fortius Clinic, Marylebone, London.  He is Special Advisor to Genesis Oncology Ltd for the delivery of best in practice treatment of spinal oncology.

Mr. Lui is fellowship-trained in Deformity and Complex Spinal Surgery, having graduated from the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI) in 2001 and completed a Master’s degree in Surgery in 2005, he subsequently worked as a Complex Spinal Surgery Fellow in hospitals in Hong Kong, Ireland and England.  He was appointed as a consultant in 2016 at the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital before moving to join St. George's University Hospital in London where he was part of the Atkinson Morley Neuroscience team working with both Neurosurgeons and Orthopaedic Spinal Surgeons.  As a Level 1 Trauma Centre they handled one of the largest networks in the UK.  He worked as a consultant for 10 years before moving to Mater Private Network in Dublin.

He remains Honorary Consultant and Honorary Senior Lecturer at St. George's University London. Mr. Lui managed and founded the “Ahead of the Curve Scoliosis Spinal Research” charity, and the large team of researchers associated with it.

He also works at The Fortius Clinic Marylebone, Central London, and has privileges to bring those patients to HCA London Bridge, HCA Harley Street, HCA Portland Women and Children's Hospital and The London Clinic.

Mr. Lui has expertise in the following areas:

• Spine tumours
• Oligo-metastatic spinal surgery with post adjuvant stereotactic radiotherapy
• Anterior spinal surgery – lumbar, thoracic, cervical 
• Robotic / navigation surgery/ 3D patient bespoke spinal models
• Minimally invasive surgery
• Paediatric orthopaedic surgery
• Cervical (neck) surgery
• Kyphoplasty with vertebral body stents
• Radiofrequency ablation for spinal tumours
• Radiofrequency ablation for the degenerative painful spine (to avoid spinal fusion)
• Spinal fusion
• Non-fusion techniques: vertebral body tethering, growing rods (MAGEC, NEMOST, traditional growing rods, lumbar and cervical disc replacement
• Posterior surgery
• Revision spinal surgery
• Complex spinal surgery
• Sciatica (leg pain), brachalgia (arm/hand pain)
• Spinal deformity
• Spine infections
• Adolescent idiopathic scoliosis
• Adult scoliosis and deformity
• Kyphosis / Scheuermann’s Disease
• Paediatric deformity

Special Interests

Mr. Lui's specialist interest is in adolescent and paediatric deformity surgery such as scoliosis and kyphosis. His expertise also covers a wide range of procedures, from revision, anterior, and complex spinal surgery, to failed back syndrome, scoliosis and kyphosis surgery.  Mr Lui is the senior author on the St. George’s Hospital Case Series of Vertebral Body Tethering where 95% patients in their cohort avoided fusion surgery.  He is also a keen advocate of conservative management of scoliosis through the use of Schroth scoliosis specific physiotherapy exercises as well as bracing for scoliosis.

He also sees patients with other conditions, including back and leg pain or neck and arm pain, with a focus on anterior non-fusion surgery as lumbar disc replacements and cervical disc replacement.  Lumbar Disc Replacement (LDR) can help avoid posterior spinal surgery, avoiding dissection of the posterior lumbar muscles as well as avoiding fusion of the spine with the theoretical advantage of mitigating adjacent segment degeneration seen with fusion surgery but also maintaining range of movement and flexibility.

Mr. Lui has a specialist interest in spinal oncology, especially the treatment of oligo-metastases of the spine, where he has helped pioneer techniques that can lead to "curative spinal surgery" with the eradication of spinal tumours by combining carbon fibre instrumentation, radiofrequency ablation and Stereotactic Ablative Radiotherapy (SBRT). He worked with The Royal Marsden Hospital and St George’s University Hospital pushing forward with one of the world’s largest carbon fibre separation surgery cohorts.  He has also helped pioneer the use of radiofrequency ablation for spinal metastases but also it’s use in refractory spinal pain in the degenerative spine to help avoid fusion surgery.

At Mater Private Network in Dublin, Mr. Lui is currently accepting GP referrals for patients aged 16 and over with spinal conditions / scoliosis that require surgery.

Clinical Research & Professivnal Memberships 

Mr. Lui has an active and keen interest in research including into trauma and orthopaedics as well as spine surgery, and he enjoys teaching and sharing his knowledge with others. Together with his research team they have 17 prizes in education and 50 invited lectures. They have over 300 podium presentations, 150 posters and 70 peer-reviewed publications as well as authoring 12 books. His interest in teaching has led to supervising two Masters' degrees in Science and a patent for a spinal implant invention.

Mr. Lui helped St George's Hospital publish MIS anterior scoliosis surgery including non-fusion techniques (Vertebral Body Tethering, VBT) or mini fusions, and he is involved in their ethically approved multi-centre prospective trial in VBT and the NIHR multi-centre BASIS Scoliosis Bracing Trial. He is also involved in a multi-centre retrospective study looking at bipolar growing rods with Oxford and Birmingham.  He worked at the Duchess of Kent Hospital in Hong Kong where some of the first MAGEC rods were used and introduced them at St George's Hospital.