Cover image for Guiney, Edward Joseph (1931 - 2018)
Guiney, Edward Joseph (1931 - 2018)
Asset Name:
E009990 - Guiney, Edward Joseph (1931 - 2018)
Title:
Guiney, Edward Joseph (1931 - 2018)
Author:
Tina Craig
Identifier:
RCS: E009990
Publisher:
The Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date:
2021-08-09
Description:
Obituary for Guiney, Edward Joseph (1931 - 2018), Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England.
Language:
English
Source:
IsPartOf Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Date of Birth:
31 January 1931
Place of Birth:
Dublin
Date of Death:
9 April 2018
Place of Death:
Dublin
Occupation:
Titles/Qualifications:
FRCS 1962

MB BCh BAO 1956

MCh NUI 1961

FRCSI 1960
Details:
Edward Joseph Guiney (Eddie) was born on 31 January 1931. After attending Belvedere College he studied medicine at University College Dublin and graduated MB, BCh in 1956. He remained in Dublin doing house jobs at St Vincent’s Hospital (SVH) for a year before moving to Galway and spending two years at the regional hospital working as a senior house officer and registrar. On returning to Dublin and SVH, he was appointed a senior registrar and tutor in surgery, gaining his MCh in 1961. The National University of Ireland awarded him a 2 year travelling fellowship in surgery and he spent some time as a lecturer in surgery at St Thomas’ Hospital in London from 1960 to 1961, before going to the USA as a research fellow on a Fulbright scholarship at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. When he returned to Ireland, he lectured at University College Dublin (UCD) as a general and vascular surgeon until 1965, when his interests began to turn toward paediatric work. He spent a year at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital in Liverpool as a senior surgical registrar before being appointed consultant paediatric surgeon in Dublin at Our Lady’s Hospital for Sick Children and the Temple Street Hospital. Four years later, in 1970, he also took on duties at the National Children’s Hospital. Asked about the problems of working with children as patients he would reply that, as with all patients, communication was essential. He explained that, to him *when you have a child as a patient, you actually have three patients; the mother, the father and the child itself.* He retired from all three hospitals in 1997. Having started at St Thomas’ working on the lymphatic system, he maintained a very active research career. From studying transplantation biology in the USA, he progressed to liver transplantation at UCD culminating in a world first when a sow with a transplanted liver gave birth to a litter of 14 piglets in 1972. From this work he became associated with the liver transplant programme at St Vincent’s Hospital. In 1976 he was appointed director of research at the Children’s Research Centre remaining there until 1989. In paediatrics his main areas of interest were spina bifida and hydropcephalus and he was elected president of the International Association for Research into Spina Bifida and Hyrocephalus. These were very relevant topics as, in the 1960’s, Ireland had the highest incidence of these disorders in the developed world. Against a strong London candidate, he regarded it as a great personal achievement that he was elected president of the British Association of Paediatric Surgeons. . He also became professor of paediatric surgery at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland from 1991 to 1997 and, after retirement, he continued to work there until 2014 as surgeon prosector and professor emeritus. Outside medicine he very much enjoyed watching sport and was an avid reader. During his time in the USA, he met and married Sheila née MacNamara who was also medically qualified. She died in 2006. He died on 9 April 2019 aged 87 and was survived by their three children; Ed, an Oscar nominated film maker and CEO of Element Pictures, Mike, a consultant radiologist at St James’s Hospital and the Beacon Hospital in Dublin and Carina, a mother of two of his three grandchildren who lives in Belfast.
Sources:
*Irish Times* 30 June 2018 - https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/people/paediatric-surgeon-who-led-care-for-children-with-spina-bifida-and-hydrocephalus-1.3546159;

*University College Dublin News* -https://www.ucd.ie/medicine/news/2018/articles/#d.en.530568; *J ped surg* 2019 54 366-367 - https://www.jpedsurg.org/article/S0022-3468(18)30760-7/pdf; All accessed 31 March 2024.
Rights:
Copyright (c) The Royal College of Surgeons of England
Collection:
Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format:
Obituary
Format:
Asset
Asset Path:
Root/Lives of the Fellows/E009000-E009999/E009900-E009999