Roger Baird
Roger Baird, past Chairman of AIVS, passed away peacefully at home in Bristol on 11th May 2024, he was 82. Roger trained in Edinburgh, where he met his future wife, Affra, at Medical School. In 1973, he moved as a senior trainee to Bristol and was then appointed to a Fulbright Scholarship at the Massachusetts General in Boston under the supervision of Bill Abbot, where he studied the elastic properties of vascular graft walls. He was subsequently appointed as a Consultant Senior Lecturer to the staff at the Bristol Royal Infirmary in Professor Joe Peacock’s department, later moving over to become an NHS consultant.
One of Roger’s earliest collaborations in this role was with Professor Peter Wells, CBE, a medical physicist with an interest in the clinical applications of ultrasound. Thus developed one of the first vascular labs in the UK, where multiple studies of ultrasound in the diagnosis and monitoring of vascular disease helped to transform clinical practice around the world.
In 1984, Roger had been impressed by a computerized clinical audit system developed by Frank Veith in New York, so he brought a copy back to Bristol in the hope of establishing it there. Unfortunately the hospital’s IT systems were not up to the task, so Roger persuaded a visiting Australian Fellow, Glen Benveniste, to develop Bristol’s own computerized audit, known as BIPAS. Entries were entered prospectively and validated at a weekly meeting, and the database went on to generate many publications on the Bristol experience with both rare and mundane vascular conditions, from which all could learn.
Roger’s dedication to his craft (I count him as one of the UK’s first pure vascular surgeons), helped to build the BRI into one of the pre-eminent vascular surgical centres in the UK, well known and respected around the world.
Indeed, Roger’s academic record was extra-ordinary for an NHS surgeon, with 166 learned publications, multiple book chapters and no fewer than 7 of his 40 trainees/vascular Fellows going on to become Professors of Vascular Surgery.
Look for a significant vascular organization and you will find Roger in the midst of it, including the South West Vascular Surgeons, the Joint Vascular Research Group and, of course, AIVS, which he supported from the start, being a keen skier and first participating in 1985 at Les Arcs. Many members got to know him over the years, alongside his wife Affra and children Susie and Richard. He was appointed Chairman of AIVS at the meeting in Lech in 2005, where he steered the group through a difficult time to its continued success today.
Roger was an Honorary Fellow of the Society of Vascular Surgery in the USA and an Honorary member of the European Society of Vascular Surgery, which he helped to found. He was elected President of the Vascular Surgical Society of GB&I in 2001, where he commissioned work that would lead eventually to the current re-organised hub and spoke model of vascular service delivery in the UK.
Roger was great company, always interested in what others had to say and their welfare, but underneath his relaxed approach lay a steely determination to get things done, to do the best at one project and then move on to the next. Above all, he was a skillful and versatile surgeon who had that rare knack of not just knowing when to operate, but when not to.
I am sure all the members of AIVS who knew him will join me in assuring Affra, Susie and Richard that we will remember Roger with great pride and affection, particularly for his huge contribution to the Association.
Peter Lamont