(ECNS) — Zhu Xianli, a pioneer of China’s microneurosurgery and former director of the Department of Neurosurgery, Union Hospital, Tongji Medical College, passed away in Wuhan on Sunday at the age of 91.
File photo of Zhu Xianli (Courtesy of the Union Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology)
Zhu has contributed to China’s development of microneurosurgery since returning from overseas in 1981. Focusing on talent development, he has organized 12 consecutive microneurosurgery training sessions since 1984, systematically imparting clinical experience and scientific advancements.
Moreover, he has traveled across the country to guide and assist the development of neurosurgery, training a large number of leading experts in the field of microneurosurgery, thus laying a solid talent foundation for the advancement of neurosurgery in China.
Zhu was born in a medical family in March 1933 in Ningbo, east China’s Zhejiang Province. He graduated from Wuhan Medical College (now the Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology) in 1956.
In 1979, he furthered his study in neurosurgery at the University Hospital of Zürich, Switzerland, under the guidance of Professor M.G. Yaşargil, the father of modern neurosurgery. He has led the Department of Neurosurgery in carrying out microsurgical treatments for sellar region lesions featured by microneurosurgery in Yaşargil’s way.
Apart from treating patients, he has devoted time to refining surgical instruments, successfully developing and improving more than 20 surgical tools, which greatly contributed to the advancement of microneurosurgery.
