Liu Minxia

    mllmx@msn.com

    A PLASTIC surgeon from North China’s Shaanxi Province, who previously grew an artificial ear on a man’s arm in a pioneering medical procedure, is accepting patients at a Shenzhen hospital after he agreed to help the hospital upgrade its plastic surgery research and practice under the city’s Sanming Project.

    In November, Doctor Guo Shuzhong, who is accepting patients at Southern Medical University Shenzhen Hospital through tomorrow, helped a patient of his who had lost his right ear in an accident by building a new ear with the cartilage from the patient’s ribs. He transplanted the organ to the man’s head last month.

    Guo, a doctor at the First Affiliated Hospital of Xi’an Jiaotong University in the city of Xi’an and dubbed China’s No. 1 plastic surgeon, conducted Asia’s first and the world’s second face transplant operation in 2006, Liao Sizhao, president of the Shenzhen hospital, told a ceremony yesterday.

    Bringing with him eight of his teammates, Guo said that he and his teammates would work closely with the Shenzhen hospital’s plastic surgery team to improve their research and practice, hoping to help the Shenzhen team to lead China within five years.

    Located in Bao’an District, the Shenzhen hospital itself is a fruit of the Sanming Project, a government-initiated program that aims to rapidly improve Shenzhen’s health care by bringing in established doctors and hospital brands.

    Earlier this week, the hospital brought in Prof. Zhong Shizhen, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering who was dubbed the father of China’s clinical anatomy. Zhong built China’s first digital male dummy in 2005.