Dr Thomas Ho is a Senior Consultant surgeon at Mount Alvernia Hospital. Coming from a background of General Surgery, Dr Ho is well known for his expertise in Cancer Surgery especially in the field of Head and Neck cancers as well as Abdominal and Digestive cancers. He has 20 years of surgical experience, having trained and practiced in Singapore, Australia and Canada.
Dr Ho graduated from the University of Sydney, Australia and completed his General Surgical training in Singapore. In 2009 he was awarded a MOH scholarship and completed a Surgical Oncology Fellowship in Canada, becoming one of only a handful of surgeons in Singapore with this recognition. It was there that he devoted 2 years of training towards Head and Neck/Endocrine Surgery as well as Advanced Abdominal Surgery focusing on cytoreductive surgery and heated intraperitoneal chemotherapy (CRS + HIPEC).
Upon his return, Dr Ho founded the Head and Neck surgical service at Tan Tock Seng Hospital Department of Surgery. This service provided surgical treatment for thyroid, parathyroid, salivary gland as well as cancers in the mouth and neck regions. He is credited with performing the first endoscopic thyroid surgery as well as robotic thyroid surgery at the hospital.
Dr Ho also founded the Surgical Oncology service at Tan Tock Seng Hospital, focusing on treatment for advanced abdominal cancers arising from colorectal cancer, gynaecological cancer, and soft tissue sarcoma. He is credited with performing the first CRS + HIPEC for the treatment of peritoneal carcinomatosis. To date, dozens of patients from TTSH have benefited from this specialised surgical treatment providing them with a prolonged survival from an otherwise dismal cancer prognosis.
In addition to his expertise in major cancer operations, Dr Ho is also experienced in laparoscopic (keyhole) and robotic-assisted surgery. He routinely employs these techniques for thyroid surgery, colorectal surgery and other general surgical procedures such as hernia, gallbladder, adrenal and spleen surgery.
Dr Ho is actively involved in surgical education and research. He has authored numerous peer-reviewed papers and book chapters. He is on the local examiner panel for the MMed(Surgery) and FRCSEd(Gen Surg) exit exams for surgical residents and is an invited speaker in local and regional surgical meetings.
Prior to establishing his private practice, he was Senior Consultant and the Chief of Surgery at Woodlands Health Campus as well as the concurrent Chief of Service for Head and Neck Surgery and Surgical Oncology at the Department of General Surgery at Tan Tock Seng Hospital. He also held adjunct positions with the Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine and Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine.
