HKU Bulletin October 2004 (Vol. 6 No. 1)

17 16 PEOPLE I f Professor Lo Chung Mau, Professor: Chair of Hepatobiliary Surgery, needs reassurance of how successful the University’s liver transplantation and surgery programme then he can find it in his pockets: business cards. The surgeon pul ls out a wad of business cards f rom Scandinavian medics eager to find out the secrets of the success story that Lo has helped write at Queen Mary Hospital. With a success rate among patients approaching 100 per cent Lo has every right to feel pleased with the fact that this progress has brought him the reward of a professorship. He said: “Obviously I am very pleased to become a professor but the greatest pleasure I get is from helping patients with severe liver problems. “The work we do here illustrates how a clinician can bring clinical problems to the lab and apply the lab results to patients: that’s the edge we have.” His team within the Department of Surgery is in demand because Hong Kong – l ike Mainland China – suffers from catastrophic levels of Hepatitis B viral infection. Despite a territory-wide inoculation programme over the last 17 years the killer virus, which is spread by close personal contact, is present in 10 per cent of the local population. Carriers are 100 times more likely to develop liver cancer and mothers are particularly vulnerable to passing the infection to their new-born children. Liver cancer is also the second most common form of cancer in the territory. Lo said: "This disease is an important issue and it is very difficult because a lot of the time the patients are in the advanced stage with not only a tumour but bad liver function. “The problem is that even with surgery there is a high risk of recurrence and that is why we have been conducting research into this area of treatment.” This focuses on the molecular mechanism which allows Hepatitis B to recur in patients. For Lo the driving concern of university clinicians must be to relate their research to the work they face day-to-day rather than lock themselves in ivory tower laboratories. Get out of the Laboratory! Maybe this focus on ‘product ’ helps explain why the University has become so successful in the field of surgery and transplantation despite its late arrival. The Hospital began tackling this in the early 1990s – nearly thirty years after the West. By concentrating on live liver transplantation, Lo and his colleagues have been able to draw together the two strands of surgery and transplantation and create a powerful formula. Up to two-thirds of a donor’s liver is transplanted into a recipient. Incredibly, the donor’s liver will regenerate to its natural size within two months. Lo said: “We pioneered this technique to the extent that this kind of operation has the highest success rate in the world and has drawn numerous visitors.” Even with a success rate approaching 100 per cent, Lo is not prepared to rest on his laurels and is constant ly ref ining techniques. The latest fruits of this work took centre stage in Annals of Surgery – regarded as the top journal in surgery – in July 2004. The learned paper analyses the results of the first and last patients to better understand what the key to the University’s success rate is. Lo bel ieves the rewards of this practical approach are obvious: “You cannot just sit in the lab and think.” Dental Research Benefits Hong Kong People P rofessor Anne McMillan, Professor: Chair of Oral Rehabilitation in the Faculty of Dentistry said she was honoured to be appointed to a Personal Professorship. McMillan is a registered specialist in Restorative Dentistry and Prosthodontics in the UK, and a specialist prosthodontist in Hong Kong S . he has an internat ional reputat ion in the f ield of oral neurophysiology and gerodontology and is Past-President of the Neuroscience Group and the International Association for Dental Research. Her special areas of cl inical pract ice include jaw reconst ruct ion using dental implants, management of temporomandibular disorders, and the prosthodontic treatment of the elderly. She is examiner for the Membership in Restorative Dentistry of the Royal Col lege of Surgeons of Edinburgh, and Chief Examiner of the specialty board of Prosthondontics, of the College of Dental Surgeons of Hong Kong. McMillan said: “I consider it a great honour to be appointed to a Personal Professorship and to be in the vanguard of research at The University of Hong Kong especially as much of my recent research directly benefits the people of Hong Kong.” Her research papers have been published widely in the areas of: motor control processing in the human jaw muscles; jaw muscle pain; the psychosocial and functional impact of oral disease in the medically compromised patient and in the elderly; health status measures in the assessment of implant therapy outcomes; and, restorative dentistry. Invited lectures have also been delivered in Europe, the UK, North America, Australia and Hong Kong.