It is with great sadness that the Society has learned of the death of Dr Martin Sarner, former Consultant Gastroenterologist in Portsmouth and at University College Hospital London.

Martin Sarner was born in 1935 and grew up in North London.  He attended Haberdashers’ Aske School, excelling in music and sport.  Although awarded a Junior Exhibition at the Royal College of Music to study the piano, he chose to go to St Mary's Hospital Medical School, where he won the Cheadle Gold Medal.  In the 1960s, after junior posts in London and Cambridge, he spent two years as a Harvard Training Fellow in gastroenterology at the Brigham Hospital in Boston, where he learned the new technique of fibreoptic gastroscopy and met his future wife, Nitza, when they played Mozart’s Kegelstatt trio together.   

On returning to the UK, Martin obtained a consultant physician post in Portsmouth, initially working at three different sites, and setting up a new gastroenterology and endoscopy service there.  After 5 years in Portsmouth, he moved in 1974 to University College Hospital London to specialise further in gastroenterology.  

Martin was an astute and tireless clinician: indeed, he was often referred to as ‘the doctors’ doctor’.  While at UCLH, he and Professor Charles Clark introduced a joint medical/surgical gastroenterology ward, a seamless model of inpatient care from which both patients and staff benefited.  For years he did three big gastroenterology clinics a week, one of them, reflecting his interest in patients as people, exclusively for those with irritable bowel syndrome.  

Trainees learnt hugely from his approach, although the gloveless gastroscopy technique he taught in the 1970s is fortunately now obsolete.  In turn, Martin was very supportive of trainees.  He was warm-hearted and generous, taking the gastro team out for Friday lunch every few weeks.  The annual summer barbecues he and Nitza gave for NHS staff were unforgettable.

Martin was Sub-Dean for Postgraduate Education at UCLH from 1978-83.   As a result of his interest in education, he held several visiting professorships in the US, and was an MRCP examiner for many years.  He chaired many committees at UCLH, and through his interest in patient care pathways was closely involved in the design of the new hospital there.

Having developed a special interest in pancreatic disease in Boston, he co-founded the International Association of Pancreatology, and the Pancreatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland.  He played a major role in fund-raising for the latter and was instrumental in setting up the Amelie Waring Fellowship for Research into Pancreatic Disease.  For some years, he was Secretary of the Digestive Disorders Foundation, the precursor of Guts UK, liaising closely with the BSG during this time.  

Martin finally retired from the NHS in 2000.   He continued to travel widely with Nitza, but his ability to play the piano and other musical instruments was hampered by steadily worsening Parkinson’s disease.  He is survived by Nitza and their four children.  He will be greatly missed by the gastroenterology community, and innumerable people beyond it.