SURGEON OF THE MONTH: DR. A. S. SOIN – OVER 7,500 LIVER, BILARY CANCER AND NON CANCER SURGERIES

Surgeon Spotlight: Dr. A. S. Soin’s Center Rates Among the Top Three in the World

MBBS (AIIMS), MS (AIIMS), FRCS (Edin), FRCS (Glas), FRCS (Transplant Surgery)-Cambridge, Dr. A.S. Soin is presently a Senior Consultant Liver Transplant and Hepatobiliary Surgeon, and Director of Liver Transplantation at the Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, New Delhi, India.

Academic Career (Summary) Dr Soin's initial surgical training was at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi. He spent 11 years there gaining his MBBS and MS degrees followed by specialist experience in Liver and Gastrointestinal Surgery, during which he published a research thesis on on Portal Hypertensive Gastropathy .

He then obtained FRCS degrees from both Glasgow and Edinburgh in the UK, following which he trained and worked at two of the world's most renowned centers (University of Cambridge 5 years, University of Birmingham 1 year) for Liver and Biliary Surgery, and Liver, Kidney, Small Bowel and Pancreas transplantation for 6 years. He was one of the first few surgeons in the UK to qualify for and obtain an Intercollegiate FRCS in Transplant Surgery.

In addition to performing hundreds of transplants, he was Surgical Tutor for the University of Cambridge, and Faculty for 2 of the Royal Colleges in Surgery. At Cambridge, he also conducted pioneering research in transplantation. Nearly 100 of his original research papers and book contributionshave been published in international and national journals and books

He was a Visiting Fellow at the Kyoto University Hospital in 1997 and Asan Medical Centre, Seoul, in 2000. He wasVisiting Faculty at the Ege University, Izmir, Turkey in 2004, and Istanbul in 2006 and 2007. These centres are among the world's most renowned for living donor liver transplantation.

In the beginning of 1998, he gave up the opportunity of a Faculty post at University of Cambridge and chose to return to India to establish a centre of excellence in liver transplantation in his own country.

In India, he has the unique distinction of having established two centres for liver transplantation in Delhi, initially at Apollo Hospital, and then at his current institution, Sir Ganga Ram Hospital.

After 3 years of pioneering work in Transplantation at Apollo Hospital, he left the Hospital in pursuit of academic excellence and joined Sir Ganga Ram Hospital (SGRH) where he has been working for the last 8 years.

At Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, he has established India's first internationally acclaimed and a highly successful state-of-the art facility for pediatric and adult liver transplantation. At this centre, he and his team currently perform the highest number of liver transplants in India at about 12-14/month, with a success rate of 95% which compares with the best in the world.

Having performed more than 425 liver transplants at SGRH so far, his centre now rates among the first three in the world in the speciality of living donor liver transplantation, which is regarded as probably the most complex in all of medicine.

Besides running their own highly successful programme, he and his team are also responsible for training most of the remaining liver transplant teams in the country that have recently started performing this procedure. In disseminating expertise countrywide, building confidence in the procedure among both, patients and their referring physicians, and in moving it from the realm of experimental status to a highly successful life-saving procedure, he has in the true sense, pioneered the development of this speciality in India in the last 11 years.

He also specializes in complex liver, gall bladder and bile duct surgeries for cancer and bile duct strictures which get referred to him from all over the country and abroad. He has performed more than 7500 such liver and biliary cancer and non-cancer surgeries so far.

He continues to be deeply involved in academic and research activities. He has at the Indian Medical Association Surgical Postgraduate Teaching Course and is a Senior Faculty Member for one of India's most sought afterspecialist DNB courses in Surgical Gastroenterology and Liver Transplantation at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital. He also runs the country's only structured Liver Transplant Surgery Fellowship Training programme, and is a PhD thesis supervisor. He is an Examiner for the DNB, India andMRCS, UK, and teaches at India's Ethicon Institute of Surgical Training and the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh advanced surgical skills courses.

He is currently supervising, 2 Liver Transplant Fellowship and 7 DNB research thesis projects.

He is a member of most national and international professional bodies in his speciality. He has been nominated to 3 National Advisory Boards in his speciality, and is advisor to many institutions including AIIMS for development of their liver transplant programmes.

In India, he has organized 3 National and 4 International level conferences in the field of Transplantation.

Need An Appointment? Call Vikkesh Khetarpal, Medical Referrals Asia.

If you or a loved one need assistance or information on any aspect of liver or renal transplant, please do not hesitate to contact us at Medical Referrals Asia. Our track record on facilitation and management of transplants is well appreciated by patients, hospitals and doctors alike. We are the preferred patient facilitator group for Singapore-based Parkway Healthcare Group (Mount St. Elizabeth Hospital and Gleneagles Hospital) as well as for reknowned transplant surgeons such as Dr. K.C. Tan, Dr. A. S. Soin, and Dr. Raj Shekhar. In all, these doctors have succesfully performed over 1,500 liver transplants in the LDLT program. since 2002. These are some of the best doctors in Asia, and if there was a rating system, they would rank among the best in the world.

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