Dr. Kevin, a physician with20 years of clinical practice in Vancouver, Canada, recently crossed thePacific Ocean with his 10-year-old daughter and arrived in Shanghai to seekmedical treatment at Ruijin Hospital Shanghai.
Many people are puzzled: Asa fellow physician with unrivaled access to local medical connections andresources, why would he go to such great lengths to travel across the ocean fortreatment in Shanghai?
The 10-Year-Old Girl Faced the Risk of Splenectomy
A sudden diagnostic workupfollowing an accident revealed that Dr. Kevin’s daughter was suffering from agiant solid pseudopapillary neoplasm of the pancreas, a rare condition amongEuropean and American populations that many physicians had never encounteredbefore.
The massive tumor was in anextremely tricky anatomical location, tightly encircling the splenicarteriovenous vessels. After conducting in-depth research, Dr. Kevin and hiswife sought consultations for their daughter with top Canadian specialists inthis field, including those from BC Children’s Hospital—the largest children’shospital in the region—and Vancouver General Hospital. They also consultedmedical experts from the United States, Japan and other countries online. Thetreatment plans proposed by all these specialists were nearly identical:pancreatic tumor resection combined with splenectomy.
Why was splenectomy deemed anecessity? In the view of local physicians, the tumor was too tightly adherentto the splenic blood vessels, making surgical dissection an extremely high-riskprocedure. For the sake of clinical safety and standardization, en blocresection of the tumor and the spleen was considered the most standard andstraightforward surgical approach.
This was a decision Dr.Kevin could not accept. After all, his daughter was only 10 years old—how couldhe let her lose such a vital organ at such a young age?
Chinese Physicians Brought New Hope
Unwilling to give up, Dr.Kevin launched a global search for possibilities of splenic preservation.
His perseverance paid offwhen he came across a patient’s sharing on Xiaohongshu about a conditionidentical to his daughter’s, learning that Ruijin Hospital Shanghai couldperform robotic-assisted laparoscopic surgery—a procedure that minimizessurgical trauma and greatly boosts the chances of splenic preservation.
Dr. Kevin immediatelycontacted Professor Jin Jiabin, Chief Physician of the Pancreatic SurgeryDepartment at Ruijin Hospital Shanghai, through an online platform andsubmitted the CT scan data from his daughter’s medical examinations in Canada.
Professor Jin’s replyrekindled the family’s hope: robotic-assisted minimally invasive dissection wasfeasible for the patient, with a high probability of successful splenicpreservation. Without a moment’s hesitation, Dr. Kevin and his wife took aninternational flight to Shanghai with their daughter and admitted her to theInternational Ward of the Pancreatic Surgery Department at Ruijin HospitalShanghai.
On January 10, Professor Jinperformed the surgery on the young patient. Through precise roboticmanipulation, the surgical team completely dissected the tumor from the closelyadherent splenic blood vessels and meticulously sutured the tiny vascularbranches. In the end, the surgery achieved the optimal outcome: successful tumorresection with full splenic preservation. The young patient has since recoveredsmoothly and been discharged from the hospital.
China’s Medical Expertise Earns High Acclaim
After the surgery, Dr. Kevinsaid, “The medical standard of the Pancreatic Surgery Department at RuijinHospital Shanghai is truly world-leading. This leadership is not merely intechnical expertise, but a comprehensive superiority encompassing medicalphilosophy, medical instrumentation and technology, management processes, andnursing services.”
He added, “Minimizingsurgical trauma and preserving organ function to the greatest extent possibleembodies China’s advanced medical philosophy!” According to his observations,the application and development of cutting-edge medical technologies in Chinahave outpaced those in Western developed countries. “Chinese hospitals andphysicians possess a strong sense of competition and innovation. If one failsto adopt a new medical technology, others will—and this dynamic environment ismore conducive to driving the wide application and popularization of innovativemedical technologies.”