The two times I met Wang Zhonghao, it was just a few days after he returned home from Beijing on May 1. When I opened his laptop, the first thing that popped up on the screen was a photo of his daughter’s wedding, in which the old man’s children and his partner were all well-dressed and smiling, a happy family. In his daily life, Professor Wang Zhonghao, who is a modest man, has a “bull’s-eye” spirit of treating diseases and saving lives, and his partner and children have looked forward to his family reunion in the United States many times, but he said, “China needs me more! When he became a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences at the age of 70, he still insisted on performing surgery on patients, and he also personally experienced the discovery of “gastroesophageal laryngotracheal reflux disease” after being misdiagnosed and nearly dying many times. The famous man said, “I don’t have any plans for my old age, I will live as long as I can. I will face the challenges of fate with passion.” In his late 70s, Professor Wang Zhonghao kept treating and saving people, insisting first and foremost that he must never be misdiagnosed. But he himself almost collapsed on the bed of “misdiagnosis”. Speaking of this experience, Wang Zhonghao was very excited that he had overcome several “ghost gates” to discover the fatal disease of reflux from gastroesophagus to laryngotrachea. In 2003, Professor Wang was first diagnosed with “allergic rhinitis” due to sneezing, coughing and runny nose, which was treated without success. He was then diagnosed with “bronchial asthma” when he developed symptoms such as coughing, coughing and difficulty in breathing after meals or during sleep, and after treatment for this disease, his symptoms were only slightly relieved, but soon returned with increasing intensity. He woke up every day at 2-3 a.m. with coughing, sputum and difficulty in breathing, and had to sit up and could not lie down. However, in the following six months, he was sent to the hospital four times for abnormal tightening of the larynx and almost inability to breathe, and each time he was prepared for tracheotomy. The most serious one had led to asphyxiation and unconsciousness, and when he was resuscitated, the doctor gave him a “critical illness notice”. At the end of 2005, when Wang Zhonghao was attending an international conference, his cough and sputum caught the attention of a doctor in Sikkim who reminded him to consider gastroesophageal reflux disease, which could cause bronchial asthma and coughing and sputum symptoms. After careful diagnosis, the condition was indeed caused by GERD. Wang Zhonghao had mixed feelings: “The correct diagnosis brought hope for life, and doctors need to have interdisciplinary thinking.” His American colleagues operated on him, and after he recovered, he said, “I was cured of my own disease, and I have an obligation to make sure that people suffering from the same disease as myself are treated; to correct the diagnosis that has been misdiagnosed in order to get the correct treatment.” In response to the positive response of the Second Artillery General Hospital, Professor Wang Zhonghao established the first GERD center in the mainland on April 29, 2007, the 34th day after his return from illness, and was hired as the director of the center. Under the leadership of Wang Zhonghao, he carried out micro radiofrequency treatment and introduced the international leading laparoscopic or transthoracic or transabdominal fundoplication. During the treatment, he found that the radiofrequency catheter was very dangerous as it could easily trigger the patient’s laryngospasm crisis during the operation. In order to ensure patient safety, he invented anti-reflux type radiofrequency treatment tube after several explorations and practices. Today, more than 95% of patients with respiratory distress or so-called “asthma” have been revived, and many more patients have been diagnosed and are waiting for treatment. The treatment of GERD with radiofrequency has been extended to hospitals such as the General Hospital of the Armed Police and 251, and will be extended nationwide one after another. Advocating interdisciplinary thinking to refine the medical path Wang Zhonghao is originally an expert in vascular surgery, while GERD is a disease of gastroenterology, and the patient is not in gastroenterology but in respiratory medicine, so he must have interdisciplinary thinking to make him cross from a difficult Buga syndrome to a common disease of another unrelated discipline, and see the strange in the ordinary, creating a new medical oddity with his own experience. He issued an appeal: “GERD has long been misdiagnosed as asthma, coronary heart disease, pharyngitis, rhinitis, etc. Patients are in danger of suffocation at any time, and he asked for help in discovering patients, the discovery of such patients is almost equivalent to making it possible to save them, and he did not want to let the many GERD patients continue to struggle with pain and crisis “. The Fourth International Congress of Buga Syndrome] awarded Professor Wang Zhonghao the “Lifetime Achievement Award” for his worldwide contributions to the field.” Wang Zhonghao is the first person in the world to receive this award. Buga syndrome is a worldwide problem that is still only known for half a page in the Hirschsprung’s Internal Medicine. The disease causes swelling and ulceration of the lower extremities, enlargement of the liver and spleen, enlargement of the abdomen like a drum, the inability to reach the navel with fingers in severe cases, and gastrointestinal bleeding in the later stages. The most difficult part of the disease is that the area where the surgery is needed is so intertwined with large and small blood vessels and densely packed with important organs that it is “impossible to operate”, which is called the “forbidden area for surgery” by the international medical community. In 1981, Wang Zhonghao launched an attack on Buga syndrome. With his assistants, he started from animal experiments and dead body dissection, and finally clarified that the key problem was the blockage of the hepatic vein and large lower body veins to the heart, which laid the theoretical foundation for the complete treatment of Buga syndrome. He created bowel-neck, bowel-cavity-jugular retrosternal diversion, lateral radical treatment, combined surgical and interventional rupture, stent plus bowel-cavity diversion, bowel-cavity-atrial diversion, percutaneous transhepatic puncture of the liver The new procedures such as venous dilatation and stenting have been promoted in China and abroad. In 1996, the American Journal of Contemporary Issues in Surgery introduced Wang Zhonghao’s research on Buga syndrome in a 140-page article, which caused a strong reaction in the world vascular surgery community. Wang and his three students have now treated 2,640 patients with Buga syndrome, with more than 80% recovered, and the total number of such procedures performed worldwide is estimated to be more than 3,000. He also founded the International Society for Buga Syndrome, and the results of which have added new chapters to the “Wong Ka Yee Surgery” and the “American Textbook of Vasculature” and a page in the “Oxford Textbook of Surgery”. For artificial vessels used in this disease, Wang Zhonghao was the first to achieve rapid endothelialization of the luminal surface of artificial vessels and 100% 100-day patency rate for clinical application, and wrote a chapter each in the Italian Advances in Vascular Pathology and the American Vascular Surgery. Professor Callow, a leading authority at Harvard University, and the editor-in-chief of Balas, an international vascular journal, gave high praise and published the whole series. Professor John, President of the International College of Vascular and Professor Jackson, pioneer of vascular surgery in the United States, said, “We are not qualified to speak on the comprehensive treatment of Buga syndrome, only Professor Wang is the real authority!” Conscientious Doctor Valuing Life Being indifferent to fame and fortune, living frugally and devoting himself to his career are the pursuits of Wang Zhonghao throughout his life. He doesn’t smoke, doesn’t drink, doesn’t eat treats, he thinks it’s too much of a waste of time to push a glass. “I don’t want people to say that I am an authority, but my work is good as long as it is beneficial to patients and recognized.” Wang Zhonghao believes that whether he is attacking Buga syndrome or studying vascular surgery, it is not his choice, but the needs of patients. “In front of the patients, don’t say I am an academician, I am Wang Zhonghao, a doctor who can afford his conscience. Patients are a special group, and doctors should give them at least a little compassion, a little care, a little conscientiousness and a little love. Only practice based on love can produce true knowledge. Academicians also live among the common people.” Be meticulous in helping poor patients save money “In my illness, I deeply feel that for a doctor, both medical ethics and medical skills are very important, especially the former.” Wang Zhonghao said, “Young doctors should realize that to become a really good doctor, they must first cultivate their medical ethics, and with good medical ethics, they will keep refining their skills, and their medical skills will naturally improve. My teacher Professor Zeng Xianjiu, Professor Wu Yingkai and Professor Qiu Fazu and other famous medical doctors, they never just look at the film and that’s it, but they ask about the circumstances, understand the current situation, analyze the main contradictions and various possibilities in a detailed and logical way, without any ambiguity.” Wang Zhonghao always asks about two things when he visits the ward: the disease and the economic situation. Because most of the patients he treated with Buga syndrome or difficult and serious illnesses were poor people, especially farmers, and patients who had not been cured by other doctors even after one or several surgeries, or who had been cured instead, most of them had been sick for many years and were in high debt. Wang Zhonghao is always careful in his calculations and tries every possible way to save money for his patients, sometimes even paying for the patients’ travel expenses out of his own pocket. Wang Zhonghao also dared to take on surgeries that others had failed to do, and he would repeatedly analyze and fully prepare for surgeries that others thought were not part of the department’s business. Some people say he is restless. He said: human life comes first, and human conscience is not to let patients lose their last hope of survival by only counting personal gains and losses. His day is not just 24 hours Wang Zhonghao’s daughter is a surgeon at Yale University School of Medicine, his son is an anesthesiologist at Thomas Jefferson University School of Medicine, and his daughter-in-law is a post-doctoral fellow at the same institution. After his wife retired, she also lives in the United States, and his wife and children are looking forward to a family reunion. Professor Wang Zhonghao, who is in his 70s, could have enjoyed his family’s happiness, but his heart is as quiet as water: many patients in China need me. He inscribed himself, “The flowers do not fall with the flowing water, but the cranes return with auspicious clouds.” It is a symbol of his will. Professor Joe Cobsen, chief of vascular surgery at the Montserrat College of Medicine and one of the founding fathers of vascular surgery in the world, said in a speech to Wang Zhongzhi that he would like to be the chief of vascular surgery. In his preface to the reprint of Wang Zhonghao’s 600-page volume (UP Academic Press ISBN 7-80003-416-6), Professor Culbertson wrote: “In Professor Wang, the accepted 24-hour law of astronomy does not seem to hold. Either that, or he has discovered the secret of being able to double or even triple time. When you notice the number of surgeries he performs each year, the international conferences he organizes, the guest lectures he gives, the academic papers he publishes, the fellowship and postgraduate students he trains each year, you cannot help but be amazed by his abundant energy. He has made a significant contribution to his country.”