File photo shows Wu Mengchao, then 97, conducting a surgery on March 15, 2019. China's top hepatobiliary surgeon Wu Mengchao, known as the "father of Chinese hepatobiliary surgery," passed away at 99 on Saturday. Wu, an academician with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, established a unique system of liver surgery in China and devoted himself to saving people's lives for nearly eight decades. He continued working into his 90s, seeing patients and performing operations (XINHUA)

Wu Mengchao, the revered liver surgeon who pioneered the field in China and drastically improved the country's surgical success rate for liver cancer, passed away in Shanghai due to illness on May 22 at the age of 99.

In 1991, Wu was elected an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. In 2005, he became the first physician to receive the State Preeminent Science and Technology Award, China's highest academic accolade, for raising the success rate of hepatic surgery for liver cancer patients in China from 16 percent to over 98 percent.

Wu was born in 1922 into a poor family in Minqing county, East China's Fujian province. At age 5, Wu and his family moved to Malaysia as migrant workers to work in the local rubber industry. In 1940, Wu left his family and returned to a war-torn China, hoping to join the People's Liberation Army and fight the Japanese intruders.

During his transit in Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam, a French Customs officer asked Wu to press his fingerprints despite the fact he was literate and could sign his name like European travelers. After Wu insisted on signing, the officer scolded him, saying: "you are the yellow race, the sick man of Asia, you cannot sign!"

"That moment of humiliation is branded into my heart and soul," Wu said in a public lecture in 2012. "It was that moment I become determined to help my country grow stronger, so we won't be bullied and discriminated against by foreigners."

But the path to the Red Army's headquarters in Yan'an, Northwest China's Shaanxi province, proved too perilous to travel, so Wu decided to help his countrymen by studying medicine instead. In 1949, he graduated from the Tongji University School of Medicine.

For the next several decades, Wu would spearhead the development of China's liver surgery from scratch by translating foreign scientific literature, performing major surgeries, and training over 250 graduate students. As a result, he is dubbed the "father of liver and gallbladder surgeries in China".

Illustrious career

After seven decades in medicine, Wu retired in 2019 at age 97, becoming the world's longest active liver surgeon. In 2010, the Minor Planet Center of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory named asteroid 17606 after Wu as a tribute to his contribution in the field of hepatic surgery.

Over his career, Wu conducted more than 16,000 operations and saved nearly 20,000 lives, punctuated with record-setting feats, including operating on a four-month-old baby in 1984 and removing a liver tumor 68 centimeters in diameter and weighing 36 kilograms from a man in 1975.

He had spent so many hours standing and working in the operation room that some of his fingers and toes are permanently deformed. But this did not deter him from carrying out two to three surgeries per week, even in his 90s, for he knew he was many patients' last hope for recovery. "I feel empty if not doing surgeries," Wu said.

Fang Honghui, the author of Wu's biography, called the physician's disfigured hands, "the hands of god" capable of granting new life to the sick and helpless with his extraordinary surgical skills.

In 2013, a 90-year-old woman surnamed Chen was diagnosed with a large liver tumor deemed inoperable by numerous hospitals due to her old age and underlying health conditions. Out of desperation, Chen's family eventually reached out to Wu, who was 92 at the time.

Wu accepted Chen and decided to personally perform the operation. He removed a 13-centimeter tumor in 9 minutes while the patient lost less than 150 milligrams of blood, a masterful surgery that is still being raved about by Wu's colleagues today. She recovered and was discharged from the hospital 10 days later.

Cheng Yue'e, a nurse who worked with Wu for over 30 years, said in 2018, after a particularly difficult surgery that left Wu soaking in sweat, the 96-year-old sat in a chair and said, "If I were to collapse in the operation room, remember to wipe my face, don't let people see me with a face full of sweat."

"I am 96 years old, I can't work as long as you youngsters, so I've got to make best use of every second I have," he said. "So long as I live a day in this world, I will fight liver cancer for a day."

Pioneering physician

Despite his 1.6-meter height, Wu stood as a towering figure in China's medical community, widely celebrated for his pioneering spirit and bold ingenuity under the most difficult economic and social circumstances.

China in the 1950s had no theoretical basis or clinical research in liver surgery. In 1956, Wu heard from a colleague that a visiting Japanese surgeon said it would take at least 30 years for China to catch up with rest of the world.

"I wasn't pleased hearing this comment, so I made it my mission to propel China's liver and gallbladder surgery into the frontrunners of the world," he said.

Two years later, Wu published the country's first entry-level textbook on liver surgery that he translated from English to Chinese. During this period, not even being bedridden with severe dysentery could hinder his translation work.

He also created China's first anatomical models for studying liver arteries by melting table tennis balls in acid and injecting the plastic-infused liquid into a human liver to consolidate the structure from the inside.

The liver served as a mold, and after the organic tissue was removed, the intricate system of blood vessels and ducts was revealed like branches of coral. These models are still being kept in the exhibition room at the Third Affiliated Hospital of the Naval Medical University in Shanghai, a hospital specializing in liver surgery that Wu helped found and worked at throughout his life.

After creating and studying hundreds of intricate liver models, in 1960, Wu proposed a revolutionary idea that divided a liver's anatomy into "five lobes and four segments", a significant improvement from the two lobes model used by Chinese physicians in the past. The same year, Wu successfully performed the first liver surgery in China.

In the 1980s, he perfected a new technique of vascular inflow occlusion that can be performed at room temperature. The technique involves clamping the hepatic vein and artery to reduce blood loss and protect liver tissue during surgery, which is still being used by surgeons around the globe today.

Respecting patients

Wu said his mentor, renowned Chinese surgeon Qiu Fazu, often stressed that a doctor needs to have the moral standards of Buddha, and skills as deft as a heavenly deity. These quotes motivated Wu to hone his medical skills and ethics to exceptional heights, with meticulous attention to details.

Wu would warm his hands before checking on a patient, and help the patient dress after the examination. During routine ward visits, he frequently kneeled to place slippers next to the bed where it is most accessible for the patient.

After each operation, Wu would stay behind to carefully go over surgical notes and instruments. His students both deeply respected and dreaded Wu's punctilious work ethics because he would castigate anyone who made even the slightest mistake or had sloppy handwriting.

"The more I like my students, the stricter I treat them, because I want them to succeed and not make a mistake," Wu said.

In 2012, Wu was named one of the 10 most inspiring luminaries in China. The speech to present his award reads, "Sixty years ago, Wu built a surgery table that he never left; he held a scalpel that is still sharp today; his commitment to medicine still burns like a flame that never falters; he is a tireless workhorse, carrying patients, one after another, to safety."

Wu's funeral will be held at Shanghai Longhua Funeral House on Wednesday. From Sunday to Tuesday, there will be a mourning hall at the Changhai branch of the Third Affiliated Hospital of the Naval Medical University where visitors can come to offer their condolences.

On Sunday, many of Wu's students came to the mourning hall to pay their respects, with the youngest being 40-years-old and the oldest at age 86.

Yang Tian, 40, said he had learned much from his mentor, who would personally edit his research papers. Wu's three lessons of being a good surgeon, a good communicator and a good writer have played a major influence in his career, Yang told local news reporters.

Wu often said a doctor should enter the heart of a patient, and he would greet and ask how the patients were doing when checking the wards. "Patients would be more optimistic and energetic when they saw Wu coming," Yang said.

Yao Xiaoping, 86, one of Wu's earliest colleagues and students, said Wu is deserving of his title as the father of liver surgery in China because not only did he solved many challenges in the field, but also a majority of hepatic surgeons in China were his students.

Wu's health has deteriorated in recent years, and his passing is heartbreaking, but his spirit of caring and giving everything he has for the patient needs to be passed down, he said.

Wu Mengzhong, Wu's cousin and a traditional Chinese medicine practitioner, said his older cousin contributed greatly to their hometown's public health affairs, so much so that his teaching of "medicine is a science about using the heart to warm other hearts" has become a motto for local physicians.

"When Wu was half-conscious on his sick bed, whenever he heard the Fuzhou dialect from his hometown, he sometimes would open his eyes," he said, in tears.