Professor Redmond is Chair of Thoracic Surgery at the Mater Misericordiae University Hospital and School of Medicine, University College Dublin in Ireland. She is an elected Trustee and Chair of the Thoracic Surgery Subcommittee for the Society of Cardio-thoracic Surgeons in Great Britain and Ireland. She is a Council Member of the Irish Thoracic Society. She specializes in the surgical management of patients with lung cancer, end-stage lung disease (emphysema and pulmonary fibrosis), lung volume reduction, lung transplantation and a range of other prevalent conditions including complex airway and pectus conditions. She has specialist expertise in minimally-invasive procedures including iVATS directed excision of pulmonary nodules ((https://www.usa.philips.com/healthcare/resources/landing/clinical-suites...) and robotic surgery (https://www.davincisurgery.com/thoracic-surgery).

She was awarded an honours degree with the Gold Medal in Surgery from University College Dublin in 1997. Following a Young Investigators Award for supervised research in lung cancer from the European Association for Cardio-thoracic Surgery, she went on to win the prestigious Society Medal from the Society for Cardiothoracic Surgery in Great Britain and Ireland for her MD work on the “Role of Human Stem Cells in Tumor Angiogenesis”. After completing her specialist training in cardio-thoracic surgery in June 2007, Professor Redmond was awarded a United States Surgical Minimally Invasive Lung Cancer Surgery Scholarship and trained in her subspecialty field of thoracic surgery and lung transplantation at Toronto General Hospital, Canada. There she had the opportunity to consolidate her surgical expertise in keyhole surgery for lung cancer and mesothelioma.

The first female lung transplant surgeon to be appointed both in the UK and Ireland, Professor Redmond returned from her consultant post at The Royal Brompton Harefield NHS Trust and Imperial College in London in 2011. A record thirty three lung transplants were performed in 2013 with the first pulmonary hypertensive patient receiving a lung transplant. Also, the first lobar lung transplant was performed in a cystic fibrosis recipient and the first non-heart beating donor was implanted into a patient with pulmonary fibrosis. Professor Redmond has international expertise in ex-vivo lung perfusion, being the Surgical Principal Investigator that started the UK Develop Trial, a process that allows lungs to be reconditioned (perfused and ventilated) outside the body prior to implantation. These pioneering techniques have helped to increase the number of lung transplants and allow all adult Irish patients to be treated in the Republic.

She is one of the first trained robotic surgeons in the British Isles with published comparative meta-analyses on robotic lobectomy (BASCO Award at the 2019 SCTS Annual Meeting) and thymectomy with recent publications on robotic surgery in the area of health economics.

She is one of the first thoracic surgeons worldwide to start an iVATS programme (CT-guided localisation in the Hybrid Theatre) resecting pulmonary nodules supporting diagnosis and / or curative resection of pulmonary metastases.

She has set up the first tracheobronchoplasty service for severe airway malacia in Ireland.

Professor Redmond is frequently invited to speak at national and international meetings, is a reviewer for journals focused on her subspecialty field of thoracic surgery and transplantation. She is an associate editor of Transplant International, Impact factor 3.177. She was the event organizer for a national meeting ‘InitiativesinCOPD’ December 2017 and an invited speaker on this speciality topic at the London Royal College of Physicians September 2018 and St. Bart's 2024. She directs an academic programme, supervising grant-funded MD and PhD students in such areas as pulmonary rehabilitation, health economics and EVLP (ASIT Prize 2019), supporting a number of publications in peer-reviewed journals. She is appointed the Chair of the Data Monitoring Committee for the NIHR-funded RESTORE Trial looking at Pectus Surgery for symptomatic patients with Pectus Excavatum. She chaired the Working Group for Pectus within the SCTS and co-authored recent guidelines publication, https://academic.oup.com/ejcts/article/66/1/ezae166/7706289.

She is an examiner for the Intercollegiate Specialty Fellowship Examinations.

She is a member of a number of national and international committees, including The Irish Thoracic Society Council and most recently been appointed as a Trustee for The Society of Cardio-thoracic Surgeons (SCTS) in UK and Ireland.

As a consultant in the UK, she was delighted to be offered the opportunity to return to work in Dublin and support the thoracic surgery and lung transplant service at the Mater. Working in the Canadian and NHS healthcare systems has been very rewarding, where there is a strong emphasis on governance, quality control and evidence-based commissioning of services. “I would like to think that I can build my service around those experiences that provide the highest standard of care.”

For more information, please see https://www.mater.ie/consultants/ms-karen-redmond/
https://www.blackrock-clinic.ie/consultant/redmond-ms-karen/