Hand injury ends top surgeon's career

By MARTIN JOHNSTON health reporter

A boating accident has cut short the career of one of the country's leading breast surgeons.

Associate Professor John Collins, who was instrumental in creating the breast cancer screening programme, until last month ran the "one-stop" South Auckland breast clinic he founded in 1996, the first of its kind in New Zealand.

But the 64-year-old took early retirement from the Counties Manukau District Health Board after finding that a 10-month-old injury to his left hand was getting worse.

Last August, when his radiologist brother Dr Michael Collins was visiting from Britain with his family, Professor Collins wanted to take them for a spin in his boat on Lake Rotoiti.

He also wanted to return to his bach in time for them all to have dinner and watch an All Blacks-Wallabies clash on TV.

"I inadvertently pushed the wrong button on the winch. It impaled my left hand between the front of the boat and the wall of the boatshed," said the right-handed surgeon.

"It took out all the muscles of the palm side of the thumb.

"We were rushing [to launch the boat]. That's the embarrassing thing - I feel so stupid. I've spent a long time dealing with the guilt."

With his hand seriously fractured, Professor Collins had to go to Rotorua Hospital for an emergency operation. He later had specialised hand surgery at Middlemore Hospital and other treatment.

"I've had a tendon transfer done two weeks ago to try and improve the function of the thumb. They hope it will be able to touch my finger - a pinch grip - but it's not technically possible to do surgery again."

Professor Collins, who is also a general and endocrine surgeon, has done operations since his accident, but his hand subsequently deteriorated so he could not continue.

"It has got gradually tighter and tighter, limiting what I could do."

He had intended to continue doing surgery "for a further period", but now he and his wife, Jenny, will shift to Melbourne, where he will become the dean of education for the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons.

Professor Collins, a longtime Government adviser on breast surgery and cancer, will remain on the taskforce set up to implement the National Cancer Control Strategy.

Health Minister Annette King paid tribute to him at a valedictory meeting at Middlemore yesterday.

"I'm certainly well aware of his immense contribution as an expert adviser," she said.

Other breast surgeons also spoke highly of his contribution to the field, especially in bringing together the various health workers needed in treating breast diseases.

Integrated, multi-disciplinary clinics of the kind set up by Dr Collins and subsequently replicated in other New Zealand hospitals are credited with improving breast cancer survival rates.