2 December 2025

Catalyst funding from the King's Health Partners (KHP) Centre for Translational Medicine has allowed consultant surgeon Dr Linda Ferrari to progress her research that one day could help clinicians create personalised care plans for patients with pelvic floor disorders. Below, she explains more.

Please describe your day-to-day work and research interest(s)?

I’m a consultant colorectal surgeon at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust with a specific interest in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and pelvic floor disorders.

My main research interests have a specific focus on pelvic floor ultrasound and manometry in patients with perianal fistula and pelvic floor disorders, and inflammatory bowel disease. I am also interested in equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) both for patients and staff. Through Guy’s and St Thomas’ Charity funding I’ve been able to conduct my PhD at King’s College London.

You’ve found that elastography could be an effective and affordable method to evaluate pelvic floor dysfunction. How could this impact patients and service providers?

Dynamic pelvic floor ultrasound is routinely performed for patients with pelvic floor disorders. It has the advantage of being easily accessible, radiation free, and offers the possibility to investigate the whole pelvic floor using a single test. Patients with pelvic floor disorders often have recurrent or multifactorial symptomatology, which may require care from multiple disciplines.

Elastography technique is incorporated within the ultrasound probe, so patients will not need additional tests and information can be obtained during the same session. If the results of this research project demonstrate the possibility for elastography to quantify the severity of patients’ symptoms - and predict their response to a Sacral-Neuromodulator (SNM) implant - then this would help the clinician to decide upfront what would be the most successful treatment for every patient with a personalised care plan. 

Finally, previous studies demonstrated how elastography can be used also for patients with stress urinary incontinence, which may or may not overlap with anal incontinence. In this case, through a single test, we can obtain information to treat two different pelvic floor disorders.

This is also more important with the view of integrated treatment of pelvic floor pathologies, which have a solid basis in our unit. We have close collaboration between colorectal surgeons, urologists and urogynaecologists conducting clinics together and discussing shared patients during multidisciplinary meetings

You received funding from the KHP Centre for Translational Medicine (CTM), how will this help your research?

I’ve been recently successful in the application for Research Catalyst Award, which has provided me two PAs (programmed activities) protected research time. This enables me to develop the elastography project in patients with pelvic floor disorders, and also to secure future funding and implement research within the department, with the main aim to provide personalised patients’ care in the future.

I consider this research catalyst award opportunity the right one for my career progression towards surgical scientist. It allows me to consolidate collaboration within KHP and to implement research production within the gastro-surgical department, and within the Trust. 

What are the next steps for your research and how would you like to see it develop?

The next steps for my research will be to use artificial intelligence (AI) in imaging both for ultrasound mainly utilised in patients with pelvic floor disorders, but also for magnetic resonance imaging, which is the preferred modality for patients affected by IBD.

Furthermore, I plan to continue my research on EDI for patients, focusing on structured research interviews within the department for patients affected by pelvic floor disorders.

___

Applications are open for the KHP CTM Postdoctoral Clinical Research Excellence Fellowships; this scheme offers up to 24 months protected research time for health professionals at the postdoctoral stage of clinical academic training. Closing date: Thursday 18 December.