A LEADING Worcestershire surgeon who pioneered keyhole operations in the UK has died at the age of 73.

Colin Windsor, who was a consultant at Worcester Royal Infirmary until he retired in 1996, was one of the first surgeons to use the keyhole technique for gall bladder operations.

Mr Windsor, of Broadheath, near Worcester, left King Charles I School, Kidderminster, in 1948 and qualified at Birmingham Medical School in 1956.

After a short service commission in the Royal Navy, he spent a year at Fulbright Scholar University, California. He later lectured in the Department of Surgery in Edgbaston, Birmingham.

He became one of the first surgeons to use keyhole laser surgery in the 1990s, putting Worcester's Ronkswood Hospital at the forefront of the technique across the world.

Mr Windsor headed the operating team in Worcester using keyhole techniques he learned in America. The new procedures replaced the need for surgical incisions to remove gall bladders that required the patient to be in hospital for over a week.

A fine laser beam replaced the traditional scalpel and the surgeon manoeuvred instruments inside the patient while progress could be monitored on a television screen - revolutionary at the time but now routine practice.

Mr Windsor, who was an examiner for the Royal College of Surgeons, was president of the Old Carolians, his old school's former pupils, in 1968. He leaves a widow and three children.