Page 58 - HKU Surgery 110 Anniversary E-Book

Chapter III. Putting Hong Kong Surgery on the World Map

In the Operating Room with Ong

“When GB concentrated, he didn’t speak; “He would be fine for the first hour in the
he just put his hand out. The nurse handed morning and after that it became a loud
him something and if he didn’t like it or it theatre, because he would be shouting
was the wrong instrument, he’d just grunt over this or that. Nobody wants to find
and drop it. To be his nurse was very themselves on that list of assistants,”
difficult and oh, to be his houseman… said John Wong, who finally managed
He had a horrible temper. He used to to convince Ong to have two permanent
kick some of these chaps underneath assistants, KH Lam and Stephen Lim,
the operating table after blasting them rather than a roster, arguing they would
verbally. It was hilarious, theatrical at understand his needs best.
times,” said Professor John Boey, who was
recruited by Ong in 1978 and stayed in
the Department for a decade.

Surgical Quirks

Ong had some idiosyncratic ideas might be from cancer of the stomach
about surgery. For example, Professor (this was before proper gastroscopies
Leong Che-Hung recounted in The were invented). “He therefore
College of Surgeons of Hong Kong’s advocated emergency gastrectomies

2010 book, Healing with the Scalpel for perforated pepticulcer and
how Ong did not believe older patients gastrointestinal bleeding.”
could have simple appendicitis and
instead insisted it was the result Professor KH Lam said Ong also took

of or concurrent with carcinoma of some pride in the large organs, glands
the ascending colon. “His trainees and tumours he removed. These were
therefore had to perform laparotomies preserved in Perspex and labelled
for patients presenting with and displayed in a “museum” – a

appendicitis if they were 45 years large room on the second floor of the
of age or older.” Professorial Block. When Wong took
over, he moved them out to free up
Leong also recalled how Ong believed more space for the Department.

perforated ulcers would recur and that
a high percentage of upper intestinal
bleeding in patients aged over 45

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58 | Department of Surgery 110 Anniversary
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