New Haven is the latest stop on Elspeth Hill’s professional journey. A plastic and reconstructive surgeon at Yale School of Medicine, her career has taken her from the United Kingdom, where she’s from and where she earned her medical degree, to the Netherlands for a Ph.D., and then to Missouri, back to the U.K., to Brazil, and then back to Missouri again for advanced medical training.
All of her training has prepared Hill for her work at Yale, where she’s helping to establish a multidisciplinary peripheral nerve injury center.
We caught up with Hill for the latest edition of “Office Hours,” a Q&A series that introduces new Yale faculty members to the broader community.
| Title | Assistant Professor of Surgery (Plastic) |
|---|---|
| Research interest | Peripheral nerve injury |
| Prior institution | Washington University in St. Louis |
| Started at Yale | Oct. 2022 |
What are your clinical interests?
Elspeth Hill: I’ve always been really interested in peripheral nerve injury. These are injuries that could be the result of an accident where you cut your forearm and the nerves are damaged. Or you could have a motorcycle accident and damage the nerves in your neck. Or you could have a condition you’re born with. But peripheral nerve as a field is a bit of an outlier in that it falls between neurosurgery, orthopedics, and plastic surgery; no one really owns it. That’s why I trained in so many different disciplines. I am a plastic and reconstructive surgeon. I cross-trained through an orthopedics hand and upper extremity microsurgery fellowship. I also went to Oxford University and did a plastic and orthopedic fellowship. Then I went to Brazil and trained in neurosurgery and orthopedics in peripheral nerve and brachial plexus. So I’m kind of a mutt.
What was it about the field that appealed to you?
Hill: It’s really exciting because there is a lot we don’t really understand and there’s so much to do. It’s also really important because these patients typically do not get to the right providers or get there too late. Time is muscle. If someone has a nerve injury, they need to get to a peripheral nerve reconstructive surgeon urgently, certainly within the first six months. These injuries can affect hand function, day-to-day activity, independence, and the ability to work. So being able to restore the use of the upper extremities, particularly the hands, makes a big difference to people.
How does that shape your research interests?
Hill: I’m really excited about the research I’ve been setting up at Yale and everyone’s willingness to collaborate. I’ve just put in my first major grant, which is about using nerve transfers for spinal cord inured patients. People who have cervical spinal cord injury typically lose most of their upper limb function and all of their lower limb function. And we can rewire them in the operating room by using some microsurgical techniques in their arm to take nerve from somewhere they don’t really need it and use it for something much more important to their function.
You’ve started some multidisciplinary clinics at Yale. What are they focused on?
Hill: We’ve set up a pediatric brachial plexus multidisciplinary clinic with orthopedics, physiatry, and hand therapy. Most often we see babies who are injured during delivery and end up with a paralyzed arm. These are really complicated patients that require different disciplines putting their heads together; if we do that at the same time it means patients get everything they need.
We’re also starting a multidisciplinary clinic for people who have muscle spasticity, meaning their arm can be drawn up or they lose control of it. So that’s going to be neurosurgery, physiatry, and plastic surgery in the beginning. And hopefully it will grow until we can create a destination center here at Yale for peripheral nerve injured people.
Having worked in so many countries, how do you get settled in a new place?
Hill: I put down roots really easily. Everywhere I’ve been, I’ve thought, “Oh I could live here forever.” I think every place has its charms.
What do you and your family like to do for fun?
Hill: I love to be outdoors, and I’ve really enjoyed the hiking in Connecticut. We like to get on the water as much as possible and explore new places. It’s a beautiful part of the world and we have had a massive uptick in visitors since moving here. Everybody from England wants to come.
