This story has been made freely available as a public service to our readers. Please consider supporting SCMP’s journalism by subscribing. The parents of a 13-year-old Hong Kong girl critically in need of a new heart and lungs have appealed to the public in hopes of a “miracle”, with the girl fearing she “won’t be…
The sampled instruments and the residues analysed on each one. Credit: Antiquity, 2026. A new study of two 600-year-old surgical tools from a Ming Dynasty tomb in eastern China has identified probable residues of aconitine, a powerful and dangerous compound found in wolfsbane. The finding may be the earliest direct chemical evidence of a topical…
Hong Kong’s medical watchdog and Coroner’s Court will look into an incident in which an eight-year-old girl died two years ago after a delayed blood transfusion during surgery at a public hospital. Eddie Chau, the father of the girl, Chau Tin-yu, said on Friday that the Medical Council inquiry would take place from October 27…
Eight-year-old Aidan was terrified at the prospect of having to undergo an operation at the Hong Kong Children’s Hospital in Kowloon Bay in 2024. But his fears eased once he put on a virtual reality (VR) headset. Guided by a panda character, the VR programme gave him knowledge of what to expect. It allowed him…
A Chinese man who weighed more than 130kg and was eager to make a good impression on his girlfriend’s parents has died after undergoing gastric bypass surgery. The 36-year-old, known by the pseudonym Li Jiang, from Xinxiang in Henan province, northern China, had long struggled with his weight and had difficulty controlling his eating habits….
An estimated 7.2 million Americans over age 65 currently live with Alzheimer’s disease (AD). That number is expected to nearly double to 13.8 million by 2060. These increases reflect more than demographic shifts; they point to a growing public health crisis that requires a new, proactive approach. While chronological age is the strongest known risk…
A Hong Kong medical school has pledged to strengthen measures to uphold professional conduct after an exchange student was found to have posted a photo on social media taken inside an operating theatre, with the hospital involved slamming the “inappropriate” behaviour. The remarks on Saturday by the faculty of medicine at the Chinese University of…
new video loaded: War Shattered His Face. Technology Helped Reconstruct It. By Marc Santora, Nikolay Nikolov, Daria Mitiuk and Laetitia Vançon•August 6, 2025 Volodymyr is a Ukrainian marksman whose face was shattered by a Russian bomb in 2023. After multiple surgeries and titanium implants, he has returned to active duty near the closest point of…
Maintaining a healthy lifestyle-specifically, a diet rich in fibre but light on red/processed meat, regular exercise, not smoking, and sticking to a normal weight-is linked to a significantly lower risk of diverticulitis, finds a large long term study, published online in the journal Gut. What’s more, these 5 components seem to offset the effects of inherited…
A mum-of-four who had a hysterectomy and was back home within 24 hours is among thousands of patients who have benefited from an NHS robotic surgery revolution. The health service plans to dramatically scale up use of the precision technology over the next decade in an effort to cut waiting times. Half a million operations…