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other physicians such as intensivist Dr Lee Kang Hoe,hepatologist Dr Vincent Lai, surgeon Dr Salleh Ibrahim,and a dedicated supportive team. Today, the centre seesaround 8,000 patients a year from regional countries.“From the beginning, we were very conscious aboutour results so when UPMC did their due diligence, theywere very pleased with the outcome of our patients, ourprotocols and standard of our clinical management,”shares Dr Tan.It was also a natural progression for ACLDT to look atother branches of transplantation, be it bone marrow,kidney or stem cells, given the commonalities sharedamong the disciplines.“We face similar infectious problems and share many ofthe medications for anti rejections, for example. Naturally,doctors who look after one group of transplant patientsare well qualified to look after other transplant patientsso we felt this was definitely something we can improveupon,” explains Dr Tan.Dr Tan is focused on leading the AAMG forward as itembarks on this new chapter of growth. Collaborationis the way to go, he emphasises. “In the past 20 years,patients walk through the door and private practitionerssee them as consumers,” he says. In the future, this mightbe difficult for individual doctors to sustain, as businesscosts get higher. The stakes are different when clinicaloversight from major institutions like UPMC comes intothe picture.“We are no longer just a private practice,” he says.“With clinical oversight from a major medical institutionlike UPMC, it becomes easier for us to market to healthauthorities or ministries in other countries and assure thempatients are treated the right way.”Being housed in Gleneagles Hospital itself is another formof strategic collaboration. The hospital has a specialtyunit - Parkway Asian Liver Ward - since 2006 with speciallytrained nurses that ensures the patients receive seamlesscare from the same group of healthcare providersthroughout the hospitalisation and subsequent visits. In2012, the Liver Ward underwent extensive renovation forcapability enhancement to admit other types of transplantpatients such as kidney and bone marrow as well as stemcell transplants.celebrating milestonesACLDT also celebrated its achievement of being thefirst private medical centre in Southeast Asia to haveperformed 200 living donor liver transplants (LDLT) as of30 September 2012. It carries out between 20 and 25LDLTs a year. Dr Tan estimates the team to double thenumber of procedures in the near future, thanks to thenew CTC.Making the headlines for the successful life-saving livertransplant he performed for actress Andrea De Cruz in2002, Dr Tan describes it as his most memorable case.Only aged 27 then, the actress was dying from liver failureafter taking slimming pills from China.The watershed case became the first in which theMinistry of Health allowed non-related living donorswith an emotional relationship to undergo the transplantoperation. It has since successfully paved the way formany other patient-donor pairs.“It’s not just the efforts of one surgeon, but a whole teamof people and the backroom boys and girls that havemade it happen,” says Dr Tan with pride. “Transplant isjust a part of our work, but it is a costly matter of life anddeath where high expectations and heavy investments areinvolved,” he says. “And when things don’t go well, it iscommon for everyone in the team to get affected, learnand mature together.”“Many of these patients are at the throes of death and forsome, their families have even prepared graves for them,”he says. “So when given a second lease of life, they live itvery differently because they become very conscious of thevalue of life.”“This makes you feel that what you are doing is right.”Special Feature 41