Gu Yudong: Don't let the patient come with hope, walk with pain

Character Biography

Gu Yudong, a well-known expert in hand surgery and microsurgery in China
.

■Reporter Tang Wenjia

This year marks the 60th anniversary of Academician Gu Yudong’s teaching in medicine, and also the 60th anniversary of the establishment of hand surgery in Huashan Hospital affiliated to Fudan University
.

In modern medical disciplines, hand surgery is considered a young discipline
.

Chinese doctors today coincided with the fourth section, Propaganda Department of Health and the National Health Commission launched ten 2021 "best doctor" and a "best team of doctors," GU elected "best doctor"
.

From 93% to 100%, his deep empathy for patients allowed him to cross the medical sky

On July 23 this year, in Nanchang, Jiangxi Province, witnessing the unveiling of the Chinese Hand Museum, a gray-haired academician Gu Yudong said with emotion, "I am very excited.
I have dreamed of more than 40 years and realized it today!"

It turned out that after visiting a museum in Switzerland in early 1980, Gu Yudong had always dreamed of building a museum in China.
Now, his dream has come true
.

"One pair of hands" is the most special symbol in Gu Yudong's medical life
.

On February 13, 1966, Gu Yudong participated in the completion of the world's first toe transplantation performed by his tutor, Dr.
Yang Dongyue
.

Sure enough, the newly created thumb went from bad to worse after the operation, and finally turned from red to black.
.
.
Family members repeatedly expressed their understanding, but Gu Yudong could not forgive himself, "The doctor’s job is to relieve the pain of the patient.
Now the fingers are not good, and one toe is missing.
, Which is tantamount to increased pain
.

This case also prompted Gu Yudong to redouble his research.
After 5 years of research, he pioneered the "second blood supply system" and finally solved the problem of vascular variation
.
Since then, the success rate of free toe transplantation and thumb reconstruction in the Hand Surgery Department of Huashan Hospital has increased from 93% to 100%-never failed again!

It is the profound empathy for patients that allows Gu Yudong to cross the medical sky
.
He also won the second prize of the National Science and Technology Progress Award for the first time in 1987 for this achievement
.

From more than 1,000 brachial plexus surgeries to the "rediscovery" of a nerve

The mystery of life is hard to exhaust.
Climbing the edge of medicine is like climbing a mountain.
There is always the next higher and more dangerous mountain waiting for climbers
.

In 1986, a guy in Heilongjiang suffered a motorcycle accident, injured his left arm plexus, and fractured multiple ribs on his left chest
.
Facing the cruel reality of the paralysis of his left hand, the young man desperately wanted to find Gu Yudong with the last hope
.

After examination, it was found that the boy's lateral phrenic nerve, accessory nerve and cervical plexus nerve were all damaged, and there was no "excess" nerves at all.
That is to say, all 4 groups of nerve transplantation methods were not suitable for him at that time
.

At this time, Gu Yudong has completed more than 1,000 brachial plexus surgeries
.
He has a special habit of making case cards and recording key points for patients
.
It’s such a seemingly “stupid” habit, but it has gained over the years.
Gu Yudong has discovered a peculiar pattern from more than 1,000 operations: among the 5 major nerve roots in the brachial plexus, 7 nerve roots in the cervical plexus are injured.
Few symptoms appear later, and only when more than 4 nerve roots are injured at the same time, the clinical symptoms of 7 cervical nerve roots will appear
.
This suggests that the muscles innervated by the 7 cervical nerve roots can be compensatively innervated by the upper and lower nerves!

This discovery made Gu Yudong very excited, he hurried to use the uninjured contralateral cervical 7 nerve transfer to repair the affected side of the damaged brachial plexus research
.
In the end, with careful preparation, after 10 hours of microsurgery, Gu Yudong finally completed this unprecedented operation
.

After the operation, Gu Yudong was very tired, but that night, he hardly closed his eyes to rest.
He came to the ward early the next morning and waited for the Heilongjiang guy to wake up
.
The examination revealed that the boy's upper limbs on the healthy side were a little numb, and he was able to move freely
.
The guy laughed, and Gu Yudong also laughed
.

Three years later, in 1989 , the 8th International Brachial Plexus Academic Conference was held, and Gu Yudong's report on "7 cervical nerve root transfer" caused a sensation in the audience
.
Later in the brachial plexus internationally renowned expert "brachial disease" monograph spoke highly of GU: "Gu (Jade East) completed the contralateral C7 transposition, it is our Western doctors dare to think"
.

Today, this technology is used all over the world
.
And the origin of all this is that a Chinese doctor who cared about patients saw the "different" and achieved transcendence in countless seemingly repeated case files
.

Climbing to the top of "Goldbach Conjecture", old academicians have new concerns

As department director, party standing for 32 years as a Communist Party member, GU paid great attention to ideological and moral education of the members of the department, he always stressed: To be a qualified doctor, we must first learn to do "people"
.

There are many hand surgery experts and professors, each with their own specialties.
Gu Yudong has repeatedly emphasized the importance of unity
.
Under his leadership, the hand surgery team has gathered infinite combat effectiveness and innovation, and won a series of honorary titles such as the national "May 1st Model Worker Group", the National "Worker Pioneer", and the National Advanced Technology Group of Colleges and Universities
.
◆Transfer to the eighth edition (continued from the seventh edition).
The graduate students and doctors who graduated here have become directors or backbones of the top tertiary hospitals in Shanghai, brother provinces and cities
.

In the face of honor, Gu Yudong has a mentality of "clearing the past
.
" Three years ago, the "Top Ten Medical Science and Technology News in China in 2018" came out, and "Altering peripheral nerve pathways to induce brain function remodeling" was among them
.
This Chinese scientific research result published in the top academic journal "New England Journal of Medicine" is aimed at the problem of upper limb hemiplegia caused by brain injury such as stroke
.
Professor Xu Wendong, a student of Gu Yudong, proposed a new strategy of "contralateral cervical nerve root cross-transfer surgery".
With the help of the magical "hand-brain" interaction, patients with unilateral arm paralysis are expected to restore upper limb function
.
This provides an exciting new perspective for humans to understand and regulate the brain, and this is based on Gu Yudong's first international scientific story of "Neck 7 Transplantation" more than 30 years ago
.

The sea of ​​medicine is endless.
Today, 84-year-old Academician Gu Yudong is still concerned about his "Goldbach Conjecture
.
" "For patients with brachial plexus injury, we still cannot get them to regain a pair of functional hands
.
Every time I think about this, I deeply feel that I am still a long way from the'good doctor'
.
Adding all my results together, it is still I did not achieve
this'zero ' breakthrough.
I hope my students and generations to come will fight for it .
" Gu Yudong said
.

Gu Yudong is just such a persistent doctor.
He has used 60 years of hard work and thousands of handwritten case cards to pursue a "zero" failure rate for each operation, hoping to make more breakthroughs from "zero to one".
More than a century of teaching experience in medicine has fulfilled the promise to patients-"Don't let patients come with hope and walk with pain
.
"