The Department of General Surgery at Zhongshan Hospital, Fudan University, was founded in 1946. There are four divisions, one center lab, and forty-eight doctors covering 184 beds. They treat 75,000 outpatients, 8,000 emergence patients, 58,000 inpatients, and perform 4,500 major surgical cases annually. There are 7 units, the unit of hepatobiliary disease, the laparoscopic unit, the unit of thyroid disease, the unit of breast disease, the unit of stomach disease, the unit of pancreatic disease, and the unit of colorectal disease.
The laparoscopic unit
The unit of laparoscopy was founded in 1992, and has treated thousands of cases of laparoscopic cholecystectomy, laparoscopic colorectal cancer resection, endoscopic thyroid cancer resection, laparoscopic splenectomy, laparoscopic vague nerve dissection, laparoscopic unroofing of liver cyst, laparoscopic repair of herniation, and more.
Endoscopic thyroid tumour resection is performed on benign tumours less than 4 cm long and malignant tumours without metastasis of cervical lymph nodes assisted with endoscopic dissection of recurrent laryngeal nerve. The incisions are only 0.5-1 cm on the chest instead of 6-7 cm on the neck.
The unit of thyroid diseases
The surgeons in the unit of the thyroid diseases have performed more than 2000 cases of thyroidectomy. Doctors’ good knowledge of the anatomy and sound operative technique have avoided major complication from happening, such as injury to the recurrent laryngeal nerve that causes unilateral vocal fold paralysis presenting post operative hoarseness or even breathiness, and/or hypoparathyroidism that produces parathyroid hormone regulating serum calcium. Their overall rate of major complication is less than 0.3%, a number is lower than most hospitals in the world.
The unit of breast diseases
The doctors in this division of breast diseases use various approaches to treat breast cancer, such as breast-conserving surgery, modified radical mastectomy with immediate breast reconstruction surgery. They have many experiences on dealing with the seroma post surgery. The incidence of skin necrosis postoperatively has been zero for the last few years. The hospital stay has been reduced from 2 weeks to 1 week. |
