Early Friday in a small, brightly lit operating room in Johns
Hopkins Hospital, a half-dozen doctors and nurses huddled over
the gut of a cancer patient, quietly passing metal instruments
and surgical sutures. After more than four hours of cutting and
sewing, the lead surgeon, Dr. John L. Cameron, lifted his
slightly bloodied hands, thanked his colleagues and headed for
the door. The 75-year-old immediately declared the complex,
life-saving surgery "one of the simpler ones." He should know.
This was Cameron's 2,000th Whipple, a surgery that gives
pancreatic cancer patients their only chance of long-term
survival. Cameron has not only greatly enhanced the odds of
surviving the surgery at his own hospital, colleagues and
surgeons outside of Hopkins say, but has also taught a
generation of other doctors. And that has helped give some hope
to those diagnosed with a disease that once was a certain death
sentence. "This has been a lifelong project of his," said Dr.
Julie A. Freischlag, chair of Hopkins' surgery dep