Top neurosurgeon calls it a day

Dr Balakrishnan in the Neurosurgery Unit at Waikato Hospital which he helped build - from the toilets up. Photo / Supplied

A top neurosurgeon at Waikato Hospital, who became known as the man who ultimately saved the life of a British student shot in the head in a hunting accident, is calling it a day.

Venkat Balakrishnan - or Dr Bala, as his patients know him - is stepping down from his role as director of the hospital's Neurosurgery Unit.

The 71-year-old has been working at the hospital for the past seven years, after transferring from Wellington Hospital to set up the Neurosurgery Unit.

Dr Bala had previously been the director of neurosurgery at Wellington Hospital, where he had been working since 1976.

"Waikato rang me many times, [asking] whether I would come and start the unit. I thought, 'okay, it would be very easy'. But it wasn't," he laughed.

Dr Bala said he had always supported a specialist unit being built in the Waikato because many patients in the area were having to travel to Wellington or Auckland to be seen.

He spent the first few months of work at Waikato, in 2005, doing everything to build the Neurosurgery Unit from the ground up.

That meant going through dozens of applications for new surgeons for the unit, designing the floor plan and even looking at how the bathroom facilities should be built so patients of all abilities would be catered for.

Years on, he has operated on hundreds of people with a range of conditions, including those with brain cancers and tumours and even tackled reconstruction work on children.

Some of his cases, he admits, have been physically and emotionally difficult.

One of those was that of Matthew Purchase, a British student who was on the brink of death after being shot at close range in the head in a hunting accident.

In 2007, the then 22-year-old agricultural student had travelled to New Zealand as part of an exchange programme, and was shot while rabbit hunting in the Waikato.

Dr Bala said he clearly remembered seeing Matthew for the first time and speaking to his parents, Ian and Helen, who had rushed from Britain to be with their son.

"I remember it quite clearly because of the way he received his injury - it was a close-range gunshot to his head.

"I got to spell it out to them. I said, 'I can give you Matthew back, but I won't give you the full Matthew back. He will live with disability'."

Earlier this month, Ian Purchase told the Herald the family were greatly indebted to the man they all knew as "Bala".

Mr Purchase said the family were planning to one day return to New Zealand and would meet Dr Bala to thank him again for the work he did to save their son.

Dr Bala said it was cases such as Matthew's that were always challenging, but which he always fought to do something about in order to give hope to a family.

"You have to make all the effort to try to save someone and you will get a surprise result.

"You might think that somebody will die, but if you do the job, they will survive.

"I don't ever want to give them a dogmatic view - that there's nothing I can do. I always try to come up with what I can do."

Dr Bala said he would still be assisting at the hospital, giving advice and taking care of "paperwork".

He would also be enjoying more time with his three grandsons, one of whom wants to be a neurosurgeon one day.