The Times (London)
January 11, 2005, Tuesday

Knight, surgeon, author and porter

by Anjana Ahuja

Professor Sir Ara Darzi: a pioneer of minimally invasive surgery ARA
DARZI once received a memorable phone call from a colleague. There
was a rumour going around, the colleague explained worriedly, that
one of the hospital porters had masqueraded as a doctor and, during
the night, had operated on one of Darzi’s patients.

Any other surgeon might have been speechless with horror but Darzi’s
response was to chuckle. His colleague was right about the charade
but had nobbled the wrong man. It was, in fact, Darzi who had
perpetrated the deception.

The professor of surgery at Imperial College had worked a night shift
as a hospital porter before returning at 6am as a smartly dressed
surgeon to perform the life-saving operation. The undercover
experiment – conducted with the full knowledge of the management of
St Mary’s Hospital in Paddington, just in case colleagues thought he
had taken leave of his senses – confirmed Sir Ara’s suspicion that
porters are undervalued and ignored by clinicians, despite being in
the front line. As soon as the suave, softly spoken professor had
swapped his dapper suit for a blue shirt, he became invisible, even
to his own students and trainees: “They wouldn’t look you in the eye.
Once the uniform was there, there was no eye contact. I was just a
porter.”

It was another display of the restless, rebellious streak that pushed
Sir Ara into medicine in the first place. His father, an engineer who
roamed the globe with his family, expected his son to follow his lead
but Darzi Jr didn’t bite. “I was brought up in an engineering way of
thinking,” he explains, of his decision to defy his father. “I’d
lived it, and seen it, and felt like I’d done it. Why do the same? I
just wanted to do something different. Medicine was so strange to me.
I’d never really been to a hospital.”

Sir Ara, 44, was born in Armenia but spent much of his childhood in
Ireland – the accent is still audible, especially when he is being
lighthearted – and he applied for medicine there. When he arrived at
university, it seemed to him that medical students, with their late
nights and fondness for alcohol, had so much more fun than anyone
else. He loved it.

It was equally obvious during training that his future lay in
surgery, with its rewarding blend of practicality and immediacy.
Since then, engineering’s loss – he still describes himself as a
“failed engineer” – has been a coup for British surgery. He has spent
the last decade applying an engineer’s eye to making surgery less
physically and psychologically traumatic, pioneering minimally
invasive surgery. When Sir Ara started his surgical career in earnest
in London at the end of the Eighties, the term “minimally invasive
surgery” barely existed. Simply, it was about making cuts smaller,
and shortening patient stays. “I was very much in the right place at
the right time,” he reflects. “There were reports of gall bladder
surgery being done the keyhole way in Lyons.”

The young academic quickly progressed, developing robotic surgery and
image guided surgery. In 1995 he was appointed professor of surgery
at Imperial College; by this time, he had became a world leader in
minimally invasive colorectal surgery.

He has also authored patents and published several textbooks.

Today he sits on a committee charged with modernising the NHS: “I
really, truly believe that you can throw as much money as you like at
anything in life, but if you don’t keep up and try to modernise, the
value of it is not the same.” That is why he dressed up as a porter,
to “stimulate the thinking within hospitals that porters do make a
big contribution to hospital care. And I can tell you one thing: they
are undervalued.”

In 2002, his achievements were rewarded with an honorary knighthood.
It crystallised his decision to become a British citizen. Why change
nationality? “I got (the knighthood) for services to medicine in this
country – I’ve made it here, and I got it because of the
opportunities here that allowed me to serve this country. I wanted to
acknowledge that.”

Just like in any profession, he says, the recognition of one person
can provoke the jealousy of many, but colleagues have generally been
delighted, as the honour recognises a field as much as an individual.
And, Sir Ara laughs, being a Knight Commander of the Most Excellent
Order of the British Empire means that his views are taken a little
more seriously.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress