An Achiever s Diary

He has to his credit the first successful cadaveric liver transplant in India (1998), first successful left lobe liver transplant in India (1999), first successful long distance cadaveric liver transplant in which the liver was flown in from Chennai and transplanted in Delhi (1999) and the first successful combined cadaveric donor liver and kidney transplant (1999)! He is Dr. Arvinder Soin, Senior Consultant, Liver Transplant and Hepatobiliary Surgeon, and Head of Liver Transplantation at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital,
New Delhi. A thorough professional, Dr. Soin has made sure the above list of achievements does not end here.
He was also the first surgeon in India to successfully perform laparoscopic donor nephrectomy in India in 1999. He has done the first successful right lobe liver transplant in India (2000), first successful reduced cadaveric liver transplant in a child (2003), first bloodless liver transplant in India (2005), first successful emergency liver transplant on a patient air lifted to Delhi (2005), and handled India’s youngest ever recipient to undergo a successful liver transplant (2006). Along with these milestones, Dr. Soin is the recipient of the Annual Research Award of the British Transplantation Society (1994), Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh Research Award (1996), Annual research awards of the British Transplantation Society (1997), Delhi Medical Association Distinguished Services Award in 2005 and Medindia Oration Award (2008). All these are apart from the numerous honorary fellowships from various reputed institutes and presenting more than 400 papers all over the world.

How it started 
Signs of him being a doctor had started to show much earlier, in his school days. Dr. Soin, eldest
among three siblings, has been a Delhi boy throughout. Of the academic curriculum, he found the animal experiments in biology the most fascinating. “I always wondered in amazement then as I do till this day, at the clockwork with which the biological machines of all living beings are organised. I liked working with my hands and would often help out others with their work in the lab,” Dr. Soin remembers. He fondly and vividly remembers his first visit to his grandfather’s (a doctor) clinic, which had huge impact on him. On his table, a small plate read ‘I treat, he cures’. As he sat thinking about this, a middle-aged couple walked in with their daughter and tearfully handed him the girl’s wedding invitation. It turned out he had treated her and saved her life when she was a small child. “I guess these were among the influences in my formative years that turned me towards medicine and then surgery.”

Understanding the speciality
Throughout his MBBS training at AIIMS in the 1980s, he observed that liver surgery was probably the most under-developed field of surgery in India. He thus chose to go abroad and train in it. Dr. Soin completed MBBS, MS in surgery and advanced surgical training in liver and gastro surgery at AIIMS over 11 years by 1992 and went to the UK. He then spent six years there (including five years at the University of Cambridge) initially training and then working at two of the world’s most renowned centres for liver transplantation. There, he gained three FRCS degrees and several research awards. With this, he became the first Indian to qualify and obtain an Intercollegiate FRCS in Transplant Surgery. In 1998, he gave up the opportunity of a faculty post at Cambridge to return to India to develop the field. 
All brimming with confidence and starry eyed with visions of establishing a world-class facility for liver surgery and transplantation, the complete lack of awareness and confidence among patients