Zheng Shu of Zhejiang University: "Happy to do research" of the "post-80s"

"Zheng Ren Gao Yi, Tree Tree Man", this is Mr. Jin Yong's inscription to Zheng Shu, professor of the Second Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang University School of Medicine and the Institute of Cancer of Zhejiang University. In the inscription, the name of the winner of the 2019 "Zhejiang University Good Doctor Special Award" is hidden, and her noble medical ethics and extraordinary achievements are written.

Today, Zheng Shu is 88 years old, and at the age when she should be nursing, she sits in the outpatient room and buries her head in the laboratory as before.

In 1955, Zheng Shu graduated from Zhejiang Medical College (renamed "Zhejiang Medical University" in 1960 and merged into Zhejiang University in 1998), and is currently a professor and doctoral supervisor of the Medical Department of Zhejiang University, and has served as the editor-in-chief or editorial board of more than a dozen Chinese and English professional journals such as "Journal of Practical Oncology", mainly engaged in the prevention and treatment of malignant tumors.

Turning the hand of time forward, more than 80 years ago, Zheng Shu knocked on the door of the Second Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang University School of Medicine.

At that time, the Second Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang University School of Medicine was still called Guangji Hospital, and the young Zheng Shu came with his mother to seek medical treatment, saw many patients who were struggling due to illness, and saw the "white coat" coming and going. She felt that the profession of doctor was "very remarkable", so she secretly made an ambition in her heart: "Become a doctor and save lives and help the injured." ”

In 1949, Zheng Shu was admitted to the medical school of Zhejiang University and became one of the first batch of college students in New China. At that time, the medical school of Zhejiang University had a six-year study system, and students had to study in the Biology Department of the School of Science for 3 years, and then transfer to the medical profession for preparatory and clinical studies.

At that time, the biology teacher in Zheng Shu's class was the famous Professor Tan Jiazhen. At that time, Tan Jiazhen had just returned from overseas, and the biology textbook was all in English, "taking such a class is very exerciseable." Wang Zhongqiao, the teacher who teaches anatomy class, returned from studying in Germany, "very strict, as long as he asks a question, the students must answer it immediately, which is very stressful."

In the days of hard study, there are also many interesting things. When Zheng Shu talked about the way medical school girls went to the library to take a seat, he narrowed his eyes with a smile: "We put a small piece of human body bone on the table, which is particularly useful." ”

"We must study hard and do something for the party and the country and for the people." With such a belief, Zheng Shu's pace of study and knowledge has never stopped. In 1984, Zheng Shu, then president of Zhejiang Medical University, traveled half the world to the United States to study, standing in front of breast cancer expert Bernard Fisher and studying with him.

At the first meeting, Fisher asked Zheng Shuqian why he had visited the school. Zheng Shu, a doctor, described two cases, one case was a tumor recurrence after 18 years of surgery, and the other case was Zheng Shu's good friend, her breast tumor lesions were small, but she died of cancer cell bone metastasis in a short period of time. Zheng Shu told Fisher that she wanted to know why cancer cells "woke up" after so long of "hibernation" and why some "small tumors" were particularly dangerous.

To this day, research on the "awakening after hibernation" and metastasis of cancer cells continues. Fisher was not able to reply immediately, but he was impressed by the studious and pragmatic Zheng Shu. In a subsequent operation, because he helped Fisher find the location of the operation accurately and quickly, Zheng Shu's professional standard was recognized by Fisher. "Professor Fisher told me that if there was something to look for him, I could knock on the door and enter the office." Zheng Shu said, "Later, I learned that many people were afraid of him, and I was the only one who dared to knock on the door directly." ”

In the 1970s and 1980s, Zhejiang Province was the region with a high incidence of colorectal cancer in the country. The National Office of Cancer Prevention and Control approached Zheng Shu, who had made a contribution to breast cancer research, and hoped that she would turn to research on bowel cancer, which has a high mortality rate in the Jiashan area of Haining. Zheng Shu and colorectal cancer for 40 years uninterrupted "dead bump" began. She admits that bowel cancer research is difficult because "it is in the stomach, and the structure of the intestine is very complex, and there was no colonoscopy at that time, only the rectum section could be found."

At the beginning of the study, Zheng Shu led the team to Haining and Jiashan areas to carry out colorectal cancer screening. With the help of Haining's schistosomiasis site, relying on a digital examination and a 15-centimeter proctoscope, the team screened out more than 4,000 high-risk patients with bowel cancer from 240,000 people over the age of 30 and cured them one by one. However, Zheng Shu is well aware that this high-risk group has a very high cancer rate: "Is it just such a thing?" ”

Since then, under the leadership of Zheng Shu, the screening and follow-up of colorectal cancer in Haining and Jiashan has gradually become systematic. The team conducted follow-up reviews of the high-risk groups screened by Haining every 2 to 3 years, and the tracking time was as long as 20 years. Through early prevention and treatment, the incidence and mortality of colorectal cancer in Haining has been greatly reduced. Zheng Shu wrote the results of the screening follow-up and took the article abroad to participate in academic conferences, and after two rounds of selection, won the first place. She is very sure of the usefulness of this data: "It is precious to accumulate material like this that is completely a medical research site. ”

In order to thoroughly understand the causes of colorectal cancer, since 1982, Zheng Shu has cooperated with Stanford University in the United States to conduct a three-year epidemiological study of Chinese colorectal cancer in China and the United States, and obtained a questionnaire on high risk factors. Later, Zheng Shu's team integrated the questionnaire with other relevant research results to form a systematic "quantitative high-risk factor sequential screening scheme". This set of programs provides the overall ideas and research programs for the study of colorectal cancer in China.

The "braised fish experiment", which has been reported by the media, also originated from this epidemiological study of colorectal cancer. Zheng Shu said that when the comparative study was first done, the cooperative American researchers chose to use fried chicken food for experiments, but in China, considering the actual situation of the two samples of Haining and Jiashan, she finally chose to use braised fish for research.

By comparing the incidence of colorectal cancer in people who eat fried braised fish at different frequencies, Zheng Shu identified fried animal lipoprotein as an inducement. She added: "Now some people have expanded this conclusion to say that everything fried causes bowel cancer, which is inaccurate. ”

In the Second Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Zheng Shu, who specializes in tumors, also did something she was proud of: the introduction of follow-up cards made a good start for the establishment of a sound follow-up system.

Follow-up is an indispensable part of the tumor treatment process. In 1958, during his further studies in Shanghai, Zheng Shu saw the follow-up card for the first time, "at that time, the style was still a hole card, and holes had to be punched in the corresponding positions to record patient information." Zheng Shu felt that the follow-up card was very convenient and effective, so he brought back one for study. Since then, from the registration of pathological slices, to the construction of tissue libraries, to the construction of electronic follow-up card storage system, the Second Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang University School of Medicine has gradually established a follow-up system with the times. This system not only helps the follow-up treatment and rehabilitation of patients, but also accumulates rich data for tumor research.

Patients are also very supportive of this system. There was once a patient who came to ask Zheng Shu because he could not receive a follow-up call. Zheng Shu flipped through the follow-up card and found that the patient "has been 25 years after the operation, in fact, there is no need for follow-up." But in order to reassure him, Zheng Shu asked the hospital to register him again.

The scalpel is cold, but the healer always has a "temperature". In early 1966, when Zheng Shu went to the countryside with the medical team in Jinhua Yongkang, he was urgently invited by local doctors to consult. When she arrived at the operating room, she was stunned by the scene in front of her: a 50-year-old female patient was lying on the operating table, her stomach was very large, her uterus seemed to have a fibroid attached to it, and the blood vessels were so thick that the doctors did not dare to use the knife.

The local doctor said that this was an operation to remove uterine fibroids, but Zheng Shuyi checked and found that there was a corpus luteum that represented pregnancy in the patient's body, insisted that the patient "has uterine fibroids, there are also children", and asked to stop the current operation. Eventually, taking into account the very limited medical conditions, the female patient's surgery was changed to a cesarean section, which was completed by Zheng Shu and an obstetrician-gynecologist.

"As a result, as soon as the scalpel went down, I saw the hair, and it was a child." No matter how long things have been going on, Zheng Shu will still shout out the thrill when telling this story. "The patient had a lot of bleeding, the anesthesiologist kept shouting, the blood pressure came down, and finally it went down to zero, the heartbeat was gone, I quickly and the anesthesiologist worked with her to do CPR, fortunately, the heartbeat gradually recovered, so I saved two lives."

"Every time I look back, I'm always terrified, because the scenes are so dangerous that they use both my basic knowledge of the yellow body and my first aid knowledge." As a doctor, you must be solid. This experience, I will never forget. Zheng Shu said.

Another time when he went to the countryside, Zheng Shu was responsible for treating a little girl with congenital intestinal adhesions, but the little girl was very afraid of surgery, and often pretended not to have a seizure when Zheng Shu examined. Later, Zheng Shu quietly hid behind the bed of this young patient to observe, and only then did he completely understand her symptoms and complete the operation for her.

A year and a half after returning to Hangzhou, the mother of the young patient found Zheng Shu, who was sitting in the Second Hospital of Zhejiang University. It turned out that the mother of the small patient often passed through Hangzhou, and every time she came, she would go to the hospital to find Zheng Shu. On the day she found Zheng Shu, she was particularly happy and gave Zheng Shu a pair of cloth shoes to thank her, and the shoe size was just right.

Zheng Shu remembered that when she saw a doctor, the mother of the small patient often squatted at her feet and touched it, at that time she did not know what she was doing, and when she got the shoes, she understood that it was measuring the size. She hurried to the opposite side of the hospital to buy a candy package as a gift, but by the time she rushed back to the hospital, the patient's mother had quietly left.

As a medical professor, Zheng Shu is not only worried about the patient's body, but also about how to give medical students a better teaching environment.

In times of economic difficulties, faced with the dilemma of insufficient funding, she tried her best to travel around the country and abroad to raise shortages of cutting-edge medical textbooks, introduce biomedical engineering majors and various research projects; visit Mr. Run Run Shaw alone and persuade him to donate funds to establish the Shaw Hospital affiliated to Zhejiang University School of Medicine.

Zheng Shu still remembers that on the way to visit Run Run Shaw, there was also a somewhat thrilling episode. Knowing that Run Run Shaw's hometown is in Ningbo, Zhejiang, Zheng Shu specially bought Ningbo's taro as a gift before leaving. But taro has a peculiar appearance, resembling a landmine. When they arrived at the port, the security personnel routinely inspected and found eight "mine-like things" and busied themselves with interrogation. Zheng Shu explained that it was taro, a gift for Mr. Run Run Shaw, and then released it.

Today, Zheng Shu is regarded as an "evergreen tree" in the field of medicine, and she is still leading students on projects, remembering the two questions she asked in front of Fisher. Next, she wants to continue to study the molecular mechanisms that lead to the death of patients with early bowel cancer and the liver metastasis of advanced bowel cancer cells. When it comes to professional fields, she has a clear thinking, talks about it, and does not forget to express her dissatisfaction with the age limit in the project review: "I am 88 years old this year, still a 'post-80s', and I want to do more scientific research." ”

Now, the daily life of this "post-80s" is simple but interesting. When I wake up in the morning, I go to the Second Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang University School of Medicine on time, or sit in the outpatient clinic, or discuss multidisciplinary comprehensive diagnosis and treatment, or immerse myself in laboratory research. Zheng Shu always smiled and said, "Give me space and time, let me do research, I am most happy." ”

Lei Sihan, Zhejiang University Source: China Youth Daily ( 2019-09-23 07 edition)