An Israeli surgeon's dexterity  treating the largest and most serious wounds has brought him to Sichuan province again and again, he tells Liu Zhihua. Moris Topaz, head of the plastic surgery unit of the well-known Hillel Yaffe Medical Center in Hadera, Israel, finally had a good sleep on the flight from New York to China recently. The 63-year-old usually sleeps only three hours a day but that's enough, he says, to give him plenty of energy for his work. On this, his most recent trip to China, he was part of a delegation led by Ronni Gamzu, director-general of Israel's Ministry of Health, which aimed to strengthen the cooperation of health communities in the two countries. While "cooperation" may sound vague to outsiders, Sichuan resident Gong Fangxue has a very clear idea what that word means to ordinary people. If not for TopCloser, a groundbreaking method for closing large wounds that Topaz applied in her operation, Gong probably would have died from a huge fatal tumor. "It was a unique case over a very big tumor. Usually with these kinds of tumors, we have to do complicated surgeries with skin grafts or flaps," Topaz says. "This time, we actually stretched the skin in a way we hadn't done before." Gong, 40, found a suddenly fast-growing bump on her right shoulder in 2009. The resident of Deyang was diagnosed with a fatal spindle cell tumor. Although it didn't spread to other parts of the body, the cancerous bump grew very fast. Over the next two years, Gong underwent several removal surgeries, but the condition always recurred shortly after the treatments, and the tumor grew bigger and bigger. Late last year, Gong came to the People's Hospital of Deyang City, after many other hospitals, including big ones in Beijing, refused to treat her. By that time, the tumor had become half as big as Gong's head, making her head lean toward the left. It had become difficult for her to move her neck. Worse, the tumor stretched the skin so far that at any time, the blood vessels could be broken, potentially leading to massive bleeding. Removing the tumor was urgent but unavoidable major bleeding and nerve damage could cause death. An operation wound so large would take a long time to heal with traditional wound-closure methods, such as skin flaps, but Gong needed quick healing so she could have radiotherapy as soon as possible and prevent a relapse. Luckily, the hospital had established a relationship with Topaz, who has superb experience and skills to treat such complicated conditions, Fan adds. On Dec 13, 2013, Topaz operated on Gong with physicians from the hospital. In a four-hour operation, they removed the tumor tissues carefully, and used the TopClosure system to connect the two edges of existing skin with a special plastic thread, eliminating the need for skin-implant reconstruction. The second day after the operation, Gong felt her pain easing. Within two weeks, the wound healed, and she was able to have radiotherapy. Now regular checkups indicate she is recovering from the cancer. It was the first time in the world that such a large wound was healed without skin flaps and implants, according to Li Yongzhong, director of the hospital's burns and plastic surgery department. But that's just a sample of what Topaz has done to strengthen medical cooperation between China and Israel. What probably enables Moris Topaz to sleep so little and still keep energetic?
His excellent skill in treatment. His anxiety about the hospital. His edge in age. His devotion to his work.