Interview with Prof. Tun Hing Lui: the orthopaedic surgeons should be more careful in the operation while minimally invasive surgery is developing rapidly

Editor’s note

The 4^th Scientific Meeting of Asia-Pacific Society of Foot and Ankle Surgeons was held in Nanjing on October 27^th–28^th. More than 150 foot and ankle experts from China, the United States, Germany, Russia, Australia, South Korea, Singapore, Japan, India, Israel and other countries and regions gathered together to share their research and discoveries on foot and ankle injury, fracture and dislocation, trauma treatment, deformity correction and rehabilitation.

During the meeting, we were honored to have an interview with Prof. Tun Hing Lui (Figure 1), a consultant at the Department of Orthopaedics and Traumatology, North District Hospital, Hong Kong, China. He gave an excellent presentation on the topic “A system of Arthroscopy and Endoscopy and Minimally Invasive Surgery of the Foot and Ankle”.

Figure 1 Professor Tun Hing Lui: the orthopaedic surgeons should be more careful in the operation while MIS is developing rapidly (1). MIS, minimally invasive surgery. Available online: http://www.asvide.com/article/view/28872

Expert’s brief introduction

Prof. Tun Hing Lui (Figure 2) is now a consultant at the Department of Orthopaedics and Traumatology, North District Hospital, Hong Kong, China. His research interests mainly involve arthroscopy, orthopaedics and other surgeries related to foot and ankle.

Figure 2 Prof. Tun Hing Lui.

Interview

AOJ: Minimally invasive surgery of foot and ankle is the trend of the times, would you please give us a brief introduction of its current status, especially in Hong Kong?

Prof. Tun Hing Lui: I think that foot and ankle surgery is a relatively young subspecialty of orthopaedics and the development is very fast in the recent years. Minimally invasive surgery is a trend but I think as a doctor, actually we should try to meet the needs of our patients. For example, we should not perform a minimally invasive surgery just because we want to do it without any consideration of patients’ needs. I think sometimes a classic, traditional surgery is still have its role so we are supposed to consider both options and try to give the best to the patients. In Hong Kong, the number of foot and ankle surgeons is less than 100 and most of them are relatively young, which means they are not mature enough so I hope that we can encourage the young surgeons to be more energetic.

AOJ: Could you share with us your prospect of the development of minimally invasive surgery of the foot and ankle in the coming years?

Prof. Tun Hing Lui: This is a very difficult question. I think we cannot predict the trend but I think around the world we explore more and more about the possibility of MIS in different kinds of surgery. With the development of the new technique and new instrument, I think the scope of MIS will be expanding very fast. Meanwhile, I think we still need to look into the experience of other subspecialties like knee, shoulder and hip so that we can learn from their experience to develop our own technique.

AOJ: Could you share with us the most interesting case you have treated?

Prof. Tun Hing Lui: Every case is interesting to me. In my memory, my first case was around 20 years ago. It was a case of hallux valgus deformity in a 15-year-old boy with persistent first metatarsophalangeal joint pain after open correction of the hallux valgus deformity. At that time, I’ve already been working in North District Hospital which was a newly-formed hospital and we didn’t have much instrument including an appropriate size arthroscope. Therefore, I borrowed a 1.9-mm arthroscope from other hospital and then performed my first arthroscopic foot and ankle surgery. Actually, it is interesting because most of the foot and ankle surgeons will perform the ankle arthroscopy as their first arthroscopic surgery in foot and ankle. To me, it is not the case because my first surgery was a first metatarsophalangeal arthroscopy. It is still very impressive because the patient had pain release after the surgery so I believe that arthroscopic surgery has a great potential in helping our patients.

AOJ: Would you please give some suggestions for the students who are pouring their lives into the field of foot and ankle surgery?

Prof. Tun Hing Lui: First of all, I would like to know whether the fellow joins the foot and ankle subspecialty voluntarily or forcibly. To those who are forced to be a foot and ankle surgeon by their boss, they may not have the initiative to develop further in this field, so I suggest that they should try to find their own road in other subspecialty, while to those who are really interested in foot and ankle surgery, I think all they need to do is just keep on going.

AOJ: What are your interests outside of medicine?

Prof. Tun Hing Lui: I definitely have some other interests, like Cantonese opera and some reading and I also want to be a writer in the recent 10 years. I write a lot because I have a lot of ideas and I also write down something in case of forgetting.

Acknowledgments

We would like to express our sincerest gratitude to Prof. Tun Hing Lui for sharing his insights and opinions with us.

Funding: None.

Footnote

Provenance and Peer Review: This article was commissioned by the Editorial Office, Annals of Joint for the series “Meet the Professor”. The article did not undergo external peer review.

Conflicts of Interest: Both authors have completed the ICMJE uniform disclosure form (available at http://dx.doi.org/10.21037/aoj.2018.11.15). JD and CY report that they are full-time employees of AME Publishing Company (publisher of the journal). The authors have no other conflicts of interest to declare.

Ethical Statement: The authors are accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

Open Access Statement: This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), which permits the non-commercial replication and distribution of the article with the strict proviso that no changes or edits are made and the original work is properly cited (including links to both the formal publication through the relevant DOI and the license). See: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.

References

1. Deng J, Yan CM. Professor Tun Hing Lui: the orthopaedic surgeons should be more careful in the operation while MIS is developing. Asvide 2018;5:909. Available online: http://www.asvide.com/article/view/28872

(Science Editors: Jolina Deng, Crystal M. Yan, AOJ, aoj@amegrousp.com)