Consultant surgical oncologist Myles Smith can sometimes hear the echoes of his Galway mentors when he has his patients on the table.

The native of Galway city who works at The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust features on the Channel 4 documentary, Super Surgeons: A Chance at Life as he and colleagues treat patients with the rarest and most complex cancers in the world.

He credits the training he received at University Hospital Galway for preparing him for the high-pressure environment he has worked in since 2014 when he joined the team at the sarcoma and skin units at the hospital in Chelsea, London which gets referred patients who have been given little or no hope.

“I think I was Bosco O’Mahoney in Wexford who said there are ghosts in every bed. After a while as you’re walking around the wards you do remember patients you wish things went better with. But you do learn from these things, institutions learn. You always try to do your best,” he reflects.

“Usually, we can make things better. I can still hear my trainers in Galway – Don Courtney, Mark Regan, Ollie McAnena, Denis Quill, Michael Corcoran, Hugh Bredin – I am remembering things they used to say to me as guidance.”

Myles came from a family steeped in the medical world – he has an aunt and an uncle who are psychiatrists and an uncle a pathologist.

While studying medicine in Galway he was immediately drawn to the intense world of surgery.

“After training in Galway I was always interested in cancer and doing surgery as I was seeing it early on in the Regional.”

After training as a general surgeon with a special interest in colorectal surgery, he went to Toronto to specialise in surgical oncology where he focused on soft tissue melanoma or skin cancers and sarcomas. These are rare cancers that develop in the bones and soft tissues, including fat, muscles, blood vessels, nerves, deep skin tissues and fibrous tissues.

He was lured to the centre of excellence at the Marsden because of the volume of very rare cancers that are referred there which are poured over by highly-experienced multi-disciplinary teams. The procedures often involved removing multiple organs to get at the cancer, which requires several surgeons to be at the ready.

In the third episode of the second series, he treats Lauren Webster, whose tumour on her groin was first removed at age 8 but it returned at age 25 and then again when she was 30.

She was referred to the Irish doctor because of the complexity of removing the tumour at such an awkward location at the junction of the abdomen wall without damaging vital nerves. It was also because of the rarity of the cancer. “(Myxoid liposarcoma) is as rare as hen’s teeth,” he tells the cameras following him.

During the surgery, we see her leg lifting as the instruments touch the femoral nerve which controls movement in the hips, legs and feet.

He has to get the team to administer more drugs to keep the body still as he negotiates cutting through the scar tissue to remove the tumour intact. Cutting into it could have caused the cancerous cells to spread. All this under the watchful eyes of a documentary team.

She later described the man she hopes will remove the cancer forever as a friendly guy.

“He took all the anxiety out of the situation, and I trusted him with my life,” she told the Radio Times.

Myles certainly appears to have a pleasant bedside manner which is at odds with the old stereotype of surgeons with a brusque attitude and a god complex.

“Obviously it’s a high stress job and there can be big egos – you have to have a certain of ego to do it, but you see less and less of that drama. You have to be able to communicate things.

“It’s a bit more like rugby than Gaelic football or hurling. You’ve a limited amount of options, you kick, pass or run. You play it as you see it each time with your team. It’s very important you have a good relationship with patients, they have to trust you. They have to understand the risks, by the time they come here they will have been to other hospitals. It’s a small community in the sarcoma and melanoma worlds so there’s a bit more humility in it.”

He gets contacted by surgeons and former colleagues in Galway for an opinion from time to time on particular cases and is fulsome in his praise of surgeons in Ireland, saying they deeply care about the patients.

He is married to Sligo native Kara Heelan, a consultant dermatologist who also trained in Galway. They have three boys, who are big fans of Connacht rugby players Bundi Aki and Finlay Bealham. His father Jeff Smith, a commercial auctioneer, is well-known in rugby circles and was a past president of the Connacht Branch of the IRFU (Irish Rugby Football Union).

Would he ever consider returning to the west of Ireland to work?

“I’m very settled here. Of course I’d love to come home. But you can’t do this type of surgery everywhere. You need to have the volume of cases and the highly specialised team around you. But you never know, I wouldn’t rule anything out.”

Pictured: Myles Smith…Galway native based at the Royal Marsden.