BRAND NEW FOUR-PART DOCUMENTARY SERIES TAKING AN IN-DEPTH LOOK AT THE SCIENCE BEHIND THE SUPERVET AIRS WEEKLY ON CHANNEL 4 FROM THURSDAY 11^TH AUGUST AT 8PM

Professor Noel Fitzpatrick, star of Channel 4’s smash-hit documentary series The Supervet, is arguably the most famous and best-loved vet in the UK, with his shows regularly watched by over 2 million viewers. But he is also a scientist, an inventor and innovator in his field. As the world’s leading neuro-orthopaedic veterinary surgeon, his groundbreaking surgical procedures have transformed the lives – and life chances – of many of our nation’s pets.

For the first time in the history of The Supervet, four brand new hour-long documentary specials go beyond the operating table to delve deeper into the science behind Noel’s cutting-edge procedures revealing how he continually pushes the boundaries of veterinary medicine, with the help of special onscreen 3-D graphics giving viewers a glimpse into the extraordinary ambition of Noel’s state of the art surgeries.

Every day Noel faces new challenges that require exceptional solutions. These procedures don’t come from veterinary textbooks, and in each of the themed episodes – Joint Surgery (including custom 3d-printed implants), Limb Salvage (including endo- and exo-prostheses); Spinal Surgery (including disc replacement and spinal fusion); and Regenerative Medicine (including stem cells, scaffolds and unloading osteotomies) – we meet two new patients demonstrating some of Noel’s most innovative and pioneering surgeries and discover the biological and technological breakthroughs that have allowed him to save and improve their lives.

As with the regular Supervet episodes, we learn of the backstories of the families as Noel enters the newest frontier in medicine and pets go through operations, some of which have never been attempted in human or animal surgery before. We follow the stories of our featured pets throughout their ‘bionic’ journey; from the moment they are brought into the practice for treatment to their amazing physical transformations which brings relief and joy as owners are reunited with their beloved pets.

To help highlight the story of these bionic surgeries in more detail than ever before, during the series we take a trip to the factory that builds Noel’s prostheses and visit the laboratories where they are working on the next generation of stem cell therapies, as well as the new cancer and soft-tissue centre. We also learn about the developments of the future that are even more extraordinary. As 3D-printing technology advances, Noel has been able to create 3D titanium implants to replace dogs’ and cats’ bones, and even 3D-printed mesh to replace a missing section of skull bone lost to a tumour.

Already Noel has successfully implanted fully integrated prostheses into the limbs of dogs and cats that otherwise would have been amputated. And he’s propagated millions of new cells from stem cell samples to replace the cartilage in damaged joints. A combination of bio-engineering and regenerative medicine is where some of the most exciting developments in veterinary surgery are being made. We hear from leading experts in the field of robotics, regenerative medicine and veterinary surgery who pay homage to the cutting-edge work coming out of Noel’s surgery, Fitzpatrick Referrals.