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Neurosurgeon of the year 2012: Liang-fu Zhou Commentary
COLLEGIAL COMMENTARIES
Dr. Edwin O. Reischauer, once the American Ambassador to Japan, claimed that Japanese group consciousness was related to its culture of rice cultivation. But young Japanese today do not tend to be as group-oriented as their parents. That is because they have grown up in an industrialized society influenced by Western individualism. Rapid modernization in China is taking place under even more drastic circumstances.
recently, due to the busy traffic in Shanghai making cycling in the street unsafe). He is one of the few accomplished, academic neurosurgeons from mainland China who attends international conferences to present and actively participate in discussions, pushing the frontiers of the neurosurgical sciences. His choice of research topics is also insightful and clinically relevant.
It is no surprise in Japan that every value cultivated by Confucian ethics was completely rejected after the War. In China, it started with the late Deng Xiaoping’s open economic policy as represented by the remark, “let’s become rich from the people who can become rich.” Although the reasons for this development were completely different in Japan and China, the people of both countries are being swallowed by the same wave.
Over the years, I have been fortunate to enjoy the opportunity of discussing with Academician Zhou many of his areas of expertise, including surgical nutrition, surgical trials of magnetic resonance tractography, intraoperative magnetic resonance imaging, the establishment of neurotraumatology, and laboratory neurosurgical research as full-time subspecialties. While it is impressive to list Huashan Hospital’s achievements over the last two decades in all areas of clinical and laboratory neurosurgery, the contributions made by Liangfu are beyond doubt. He leads by example, and his unassuming and inclusive leadership style is something for all of us to consider.
Although we Japanese have very regretful memories of our actions toward China in the past, we now have to work together to cope with the drastic changes that come with economic development through globalization, and that have led us to place a high significance on money. It is extremely difficult for anyone either in China or in Japan to counteract this loss of social ethics. However, we neurosurgeons should take care not only to conduct treatment of poor patients in a bioethical way, but also not to fall into indifference to general ethics. In fact, it reminds me that a medical doctor in the premodern period in Japan was referred to as a “Jui,” which means a medical doctor with a mastery of Confucianism. 1878-8750/$ - see front matter © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. DOI: 10.1016/j.wneu.2011.12.016
Wai S. Poon, M.D. Professor and Chief in Neurosurgery, Department of Surgery, Division of Neurosurgery, Prince of Wales Hospital, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong, People’s Republic of China
I
have known Professor Liangfu Zhou since the late 1980s. A long-term relationship between the Huashan Hospital and the Prince of Wales Hospital of more than two decades has been established. As the person in charge of the largest neurosurgical service in mainland China and an elected Fellow of the prestigious Chinese Academy of Engineering, Professor Zhou’s achievements in academic neurosurgery have been listed and elegantly described in articles and other commentaries in this issue of WORLD NEUROSURGERY. In this short commentary, features of his lifestyle that account for his success will be described. Liangfu is now fondly addressed by the Chinese neurosurgical community as Academician Zhou. His extremely modest personality has made him popular yet effective; effective in the sense that he has been successful in expanding the neurosurgical service from within Huashan Hospital to multiple campuses servicing patients in Shanghai and internationally. His choice of young partners to take charge of subspecialties and teams is also insightful and successful. This is reflected by his highly disciplined and healthy lifestyle: a nonsmoker and nondrinker, he has always started work early, arriving on his bicycle (until
230
www.SCIENCEDIRECT.com
1878-8750/$ - see front matter © 2012 Published by Elsevier Inc. DOI: 10.1016/j.wneu.2012.01.036
Renzhi Wang, M.D., Ph.D. Professor and Chief, Department of Neurosurgery, Peking Union Medical College Hospital, Peking Union Medical College and Chinese Academy of Medical Science (PUMC & CAMS), Beijing, People’s Republic of China
P
rofessor Zhou is one of the most prestigious leading experts in the field of contemporary neurosurgery China. Since becoming the Chief of the Department of Neurosurgery at Huashan Hospital (affiliated with Fudan University) in 1984, he has dedicated his excellent clinical skills, noble medical ethics, and outstanding leadership to the pursuit of upgrading the original department to one of the largest neurosurgery centers in the world. Professor Zhou has been practicing neurosurgery for nearly five decades, and has conducted tens of thousands of operations. He has accumulated rich experience in the treatment of three main diseases in the area of neurosurgery. As a pioneer of microneurosurgery and the cranial blood vessel reconstruction technique, he has achieved remarkable success in the treatment of irregular and huge aneurysms. With the aim of improving the outcome of current aneurysm treatment techniques, he established a new standard for the diagnosis and treatment of aneurysms in China. In the area of skull base tumor treatment, Professor Zhou adopted exclusive operative approaches and treatment techniques. His “sandwich approach” enables the effective prevention of both cerebrospinal fluid leakage and intracranial infections without the necessity of bone implantation. In recent years, Professor Zhou has played a pivotal role in the progress of establishing a system of comprehensive treatment for brain trauma and has also participated in several large-scale, multicenter, prospective epidemiological studies on cranial trauma.
77 [2]: 226-232, FEBRUARY 2012 WORLD NEUROSURGERY
Dr. Edwin O. Reischauer, once the American Ambassador to Japan, claimed that Japanese group consciousness was related to its culture of rice cultivation. But young Japanese today do not tend to be as group-oriented as their parents. That is because they have grown up in an industrialized society influenced by Western individualism. Rapid modernization in China is taking place under even more drastic circumstances.
recently, due to the busy traffic in Shanghai making cycling in the street unsafe). He is one of the few accomplished, academic neurosurgeons from mainland China who attends international conferences to present and actively participate in discussions, pushing the frontiers of the neurosurgical sciences. His choice of research topics is also insightful and clinically relevant.
It is no surprise in Japan that every value cultivated by Confucian ethics was completely rejected after the War. In China, it started with the late Deng Xiaoping’s open economic policy as represented by the remark, “let’s become rich from the people who can become rich.” Although the reasons for this development were completely different in Japan and China, the people of both countries are being swallowed by the same wave.
Over the years, I have been fortunate to enjoy the opportunity of discussing with Academician Zhou many of his areas of expertise, including surgical nutrition, surgical trials of magnetic resonance tractography, intraoperative magnetic resonance imaging, the establishment of neurotraumatology, and laboratory neurosurgical research as full-time subspecialties. While it is impressive to list Huashan Hospital’s achievements over the last two decades in all areas of clinical and laboratory neurosurgery, the contributions made by Liangfu are beyond doubt. He leads by example, and his unassuming and inclusive leadership style is something for all of us to consider.
Although we Japanese have very regretful memories of our actions toward China in the past, we now have to work together to cope with the drastic changes that come with economic development through globalization, and that have led us to place a high significance on money. It is extremely difficult for anyone either in China or in Japan to counteract this loss of social ethics. However, we neurosurgeons should take care not only to conduct treatment of poor patients in a bioethical way, but also not to fall into indifference to general ethics. In fact, it reminds me that a medical doctor in the premodern period in Japan was referred to as a “Jui,” which means a medical doctor with a mastery of Confucianism. 1878-8750/$ - see front matter © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. DOI: 10.1016/j.wneu.2011.12.016
Wai S. Poon, M.D. Professor and Chief in Neurosurgery, Department of Surgery, Division of Neurosurgery, Prince of Wales Hospital, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong, People’s Republic of China
I
have known Professor Liangfu Zhou since the late 1980s. A long-term relationship between the Huashan Hospital and the Prince of Wales Hospital of more than two decades has been established. As the person in charge of the largest neurosurgical service in mainland China and an elected Fellow of the prestigious Chinese Academy of Engineering, Professor Zhou’s achievements in academic neurosurgery have been listed and elegantly described in articles and other commentaries in this issue of WORLD NEUROSURGERY. In this short commentary, features of his lifestyle that account for his success will be described. Liangfu is now fondly addressed by the Chinese neurosurgical community as Academician Zhou. His extremely modest personality has made him popular yet effective; effective in the sense that he has been successful in expanding the neurosurgical service from within Huashan Hospital to multiple campuses servicing patients in Shanghai and internationally. His choice of young partners to take charge of subspecialties and teams is also insightful and successful. This is reflected by his highly disciplined and healthy lifestyle: a nonsmoker and nondrinker, he has always started work early, arriving on his bicycle (until
230
www.SCIENCEDIRECT.com
1878-8750/$ - see front matter © 2012 Published by Elsevier Inc. DOI: 10.1016/j.wneu.2012.01.036
Renzhi Wang, M.D., Ph.D. Professor and Chief, Department of Neurosurgery, Peking Union Medical College Hospital, Peking Union Medical College and Chinese Academy of Medical Science (PUMC & CAMS), Beijing, People’s Republic of China
P
rofessor Zhou is one of the most prestigious leading experts in the field of contemporary neurosurgery China. Since becoming the Chief of the Department of Neurosurgery at Huashan Hospital (affiliated with Fudan University) in 1984, he has dedicated his excellent clinical skills, noble medical ethics, and outstanding leadership to the pursuit of upgrading the original department to one of the largest neurosurgery centers in the world. Professor Zhou has been practicing neurosurgery for nearly five decades, and has conducted tens of thousands of operations. He has accumulated rich experience in the treatment of three main diseases in the area of neurosurgery. As a pioneer of microneurosurgery and the cranial blood vessel reconstruction technique, he has achieved remarkable success in the treatment of irregular and huge aneurysms. With the aim of improving the outcome of current aneurysm treatment techniques, he established a new standard for the diagnosis and treatment of aneurysms in China. In the area of skull base tumor treatment, Professor Zhou adopted exclusive operative approaches and treatment techniques. His “sandwich approach” enables the effective prevention of both cerebrospinal fluid leakage and intracranial infections without the necessity of bone implantation. In recent years, Professor Zhou has played a pivotal role in the progress of establishing a system of comprehensive treatment for brain trauma and has also participated in several large-scale, multicenter, prospective epidemiological studies on cranial trauma.
77 [2]: 226-232, FEBRUARY 2012 WORLD NEUROSURGERY