Primary Biliary Cholangitis Highlights from EASL 2023

Consultant Hepatologist and Honorary Senior Lecturer at the John Radcliffe Hospital and University of Oxford. Clinical Lead for autoimmune and cholestatic liver disease in Oxford. National Committee Chair for UK-IgG4, Steering Committee for British Association for the Study of the Liver Immune-Mediated Liver Disease Special Interest Group and UK-PSC, and Scientific Committee for UK-AIH. Medical Advisory Board for the PBC Foundation and Scientific Advisory Board for PSC Support. Translational funding from the Welcome Trust, NIHR Academy of Medical Sciences, NIHR BRC Oxford, and Oxford Charitable Fund.

Kath qualified as a nurse at Ormskirk Hospital, West Lancashire.  She gained experience in major abdominal and vascular theatres at both Ninewells Hospital in Dundee and at Heartlands Hospital in Birmingham.  In 2000 she joined the team at the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle upon Tyne as an endoscopy nurse before taking up a dual Nurse Specialist/research role with the Upper GI Regional Team at the Northern Oesophageal Gastric Cancer Unit. 

Since 2013 Kath has worked in the Hepatology Unit at the Freeman hospital, within the Newcastle Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, where she has developed an interested in PBC. Currently she works in a dual role covering both research and as the first dedicated Autoimmune Liver Nurse Specialist within the trust, where she focused on patients with PBC.  Kath set up a nurse led PBC telephone clinic and helped to manage the PBC ODN.  She is also part of the PBC Connect educational cohort along with 2 consultants and 2 other nurse specialists from Cambridge, London, Birmingham and Oxford, helping to educate around PBC.

CEO at PBC Foundation, Chair of Global Liver Institute’s Paediatric and Rare Liver Disease Council and is also Chair of umbrella organisation, Liver Patients International. PBC Foundation is a UK-based international patient support and advocacy non-profit organisation that supports over 20,000 patients in over 80 countries around the world