Dr Jonathan Hayden Smith

Dr Jonathan Hayden Smith is a Consultant in Paediatric Cardiothoracic Anaesthesia and Intensive Care and Associate Clinical Lecturer at Newcastle University. He is an expert in the anaesthesia of children for surgery, particularly cardiothoracic surgery. With a great deal of experience in paediatric intensive care. He has undertaken research around technical therapies and airway management in children.

He is involved in the full range of congenital heart surgery from neonates to the elderly. The Freeman is one of two paediatric cardiac transplant centres for the UK performing 20 or more grafts each year (and have excellent results) with an associated mechanical assist program (VAD or Berlin Heart). There is also a busy extra-corporeal life support program {one of six such centres in the UK}.

Dr Smith gave up his paediatric intensive care responsibilities in 2014. The paediatric intensive care then had 360-400 admissions each year. (0.85, in 2011-13 SMR in PICANET) Almost 80% of patients are less than one year old. The Freeman ECMO program has treated more than 500 children in the last twenty-six years (mortality of respiratory ECMO currently about 28%) and NHS England funded the mechanical cardiac assist program (VADs, in tandem with Great Ormond Street). In 2019 he ‘retired and returned’ to a full-time cardiothoracic anaesthesia post.

He was the director of the paediatric ICU at the Freeman Hospital until September 2008.He led the ECMO program (and first author and subsequently editor of the Freeman Hospital VAD and ECMO Manual; 176 pages, 63,000 words) until 2018. All the above meshed very well with the paediatric cardiac transplant program. The success of the variety of therapies used at the Freeman has been a huge stimulus to Dr Smith in the last 26 years.

Dr Smith has undertaken medicolegal work for over 15 years. He has written 50 reports (most in the last five years), attended joint conferences with counsel, joint expert conferences and attended court to give evidence. These have always been in his areas of expertise; cardiothoracic or paediatric anaesthesia, PICU and most particularly the use of ECMO. He is a member of the Expert Witness Institute (10003395) and has obtained the Cardiff University Bond Solon Civil Expert Witness Certificate (2023).

He has conducted external peer reviews of other centres and reviewed problems in other hospitals when asked by their medical director or NHS England.

Dr Smith also reviews papers for a variety of journals in his fields of interest, most recently these include Intensive Care Medicine, Paediatric Anaesthesia, Perfusion and Thorax.