Dr K C Tan

Dr. Tan graduated from the Medical Faculty, University of Malaya in 1978 and obtained his Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh in 1982. In 1984-1985, he obtained advanced training in paediatric surgery in Manchester and Southampton, UK. He obtained further training in paediatric hepatobiliary surgery and liver transplant surgery in King’s College Hospital (KCH), London from 1986 to 1994.
Among the 400 Liver Transplant operations he performed in the UK, many were procedures that were being performed for the first time in the UK. He performed the first ‘split-liver’ transplant operation where the donor graft was divided and transplanted into 2 recipients. He also performed the first auxiliary heterotopic liver graft for a patient in fulminant hepatic failure. A pair of siblings with Crigler-Najjar syndrome was successfully given orthotopic segmental grafts, the first such operation in Europe and the second time it had been performed in the world.

He performed 5 combined liver-kidney and 2 combined heart-liver transplant operations, the latter a collaborative effort with Professor Sir Magdi Yacoub of Harefield Hospital, London.
Although the Liver Transplant Programme in KCH was largely adult based, he performed over 75 paediatric liver transplants, 45% of which were liver reductions from an adult liver. He successfully completed the first pilot study on paediatirc living donor liver transplantation in the UK .
During his tenure as the Senior Liver Transplant Surgeon at KCH, he trained 26 surgeons in hepatobiliary and liver transplant surgery. He advised and helped implement the Irish National Liver Transplant Programme in St. Vincent’s Hospital, Dublin.
He returned to South East Asia in 1994 after 6 years as Consultant Surgeon in KCH and started the transplant program at NUH Singapore and then in 2002 he set up private practice in Gleneagles Hospital, Singapore