Senior surgeon’s herculean effort to foster research culture

All postgraduate students and university academics are familiar with the age-old aphorism ‘Publish or Perish’ which highlights the importance of research for progress in their professional career. However, until recently research was not given its due place in postgraduate surgical education of Sri Lanka. Many jokingly said ‘Good surgeons operate; bad surgeons do research’! Fortunately, during the last few years research has become an important component of postgraduate surgical education. Now it is mandatory to conduct research and have publications before becoming eligible to be qualified as a specialist surgeon in this country.

Sir Isaac Newton said ‘If I have been able to see farther than others, it was because I stood on the shoulders of giants’ indicating the importance of the existing knowledge founded by his predecessors. ‘Stand on the shoulders of giants’ is the motto of the Google Scholar as displayed in the cover page of its website. Therefore, it is essential that we refer research already done, in order to plan and conduct better and more advanced research. This is crucial for the advancement and progress of a civilised society. Some believe that the advanced knowledge and skills on agriculture, irrigation, architecture and health care we had in ancient Sri Lanka was lost to future generations as it was not documented and preserved.

It is not difficult to locate research done in the recent past on surgical sciences, as most articles are available in the internet and can be searched easily. Despite extreme restrictions by

certain sources requesting payments, thanks to the hackers and their websites, almost any scientific article that has been published can be accessed free. However, research published a couple of decades ago and beyond, are still available only as hard copies in a few libraries and searching for them is extremely difficult if not impossible.

Professor Channa Ratnatunga (CR), Emeritus Professor of Surgery, University of Peradeniya has stepped in to fill this void by compiling a bibliography of research conducted in Sri Lanka related to surgery and its allied fields. Being a scientific researcher of distinction and a prolific writer himself, he has taken great pains to list every single article written by Sri Lankan surgeons from 1850 to 2021 in any journal and categorised them according to different specialties and sections making search easy.

This mammoth task has been completed by CR himself despite ill health due to a cerebrovascular event sustained a few years ago. Professor A. H. Sheriffdeen, Emeritus Professor of Surgery, University of Colombo and eminent Vascular and Transplant Surgeon who conducted the first kidney transplant in Sri Lanka writing a foreword to the book, marvels at the amount of work and research that has gone into this valuable publication.

Titled ‘A Bibliography of Sri Lankan Surgical Research’, the book runs into 286 pages of A4 size and the names of authors of each publication are highlighted in bold for easy perusal. The font size of 12 would help even elderly readers with poor vision refer the contents with ease. The chapters on articles related to history of surgery in Sri Lanka, surgical basics and overviews would be of use even to non-medical researchers and writers.

The topics of these chapters especially articles published more than 100 years ago will make readers rush to either Sri Lanka the Medical Library or Peradeniya University library to read and enjoy their interesting contents.

Printers Ananda Press should be applauded for the elegant finish. The College of Surgeons of Sri Lanka has taken the initiative to publish this work as part of its golden jubilee celebrations. This gesture augurs well with their theme for this year and will be a worthwhile investment in relation to their younger members.

CR has taken the extra effort to include the abstracts of presentations made at various scientific fora of this country too. This must have been a herculean task. Many of those proceedings and abstract books may not be easily accessible to researchers and the contents may not have undergone the rigorous peer review which is the hallmark of quality assurance in research. Whether this extra effort is worth it in the long run would be debatable.

Being modest and unassuming, CR has not even printed his name in the cover page giving the full credit to the publisher- The College of Surgeons of Sri Lanka over which he presided in 2003. This shows his clear intentions in compiling this book - not for personal gain but to perpetuate a research culture among blossoming surgeons. In the prologue, he writes: ‘It is envisaged that this will help fuel future research into surgical disease in Sri Lanka, and also become a valuable resource for literature reviews of the same’. Now it is up to the younger surgeons to pay tribute to CR for this tireless project, by conducting better quality research leading to better patient outcomes. Prof. Channa Ratnatunga has given you the opportunity to stand on the shoulders of giants to see far! Please grab the opportunity!!

The book is available at the College of Surgeons Sri Lanka, No. 6, Independence Avenue, Colombo 7. The soft copy is available free at the official website of the College of Surgeons of

Sri Lanka - http://surgeons.lk.