His role in writing and editing have included producing over 23 textbooks and 150 peer-reviewed papers, being editor-in-chief of the International Surgery and an editorial board member for the journals Transplantation Proceedings and Graft. In his role in global health issues, he has been involved in collaborations tackling disease in Africa and has raised the issue of the risks of unregulated trade in organ donation.
As a musician, he plays the clarinet and his performances include the hymn 'Jerusalem', dedicated to the children of Lebanon, and in A Time Remembered as a tribute to Air France pilot, Michel Bacos.
Early life and education
Nadey S. Hakim was born in Britain,[1] in 1958[2] into a Lebanese family.[1][3] As a teenager, when in Lebanon, he witnessed the war. He later recalled that while the city was under fire from bombs and rockets, "the thing I used to do was put my headphones on and listen to music because I played the clarinet. Schools were closed… We didn’t think we would survive."[3] He spent this time reading and learning languages, eventually nine in all including French, Italian, German, Russian, Arabic, Hebrew and Japanese,[2] and fled Lebanon before completing school.[3] He was inspired by his father.[4]
Hakim had hoped that the world's first hand transplantation would be performed in London.[11] Instead, representing Britain,[12] in September 1998, then working at St Mary's Hospital, London, he joined the team led by Jean-Michel Dubernard at the Édouard Herriot Hospital in Lyon, that then performed the world's first hand transplantation, an operation that took 14 hours. The recipient of the donor hand, Clint Hallam, failed to follow aftercare directions and later requested that the transplanted hand be removed.[13][14] Hakim amputated the hand in February 2001 in London.[15][16]
In 2000, he was one of 20 surgeons led by Dubernard, involved in the transplantation of two arms on a 33 year old French man who lost both his arms in an explosive accident fours years earlier.[17]
Kidney transplantation
He revealed in an interview that one of the surgeons who inspired Hakim and whom he met, was the American Joseph Murray, who performed the first successful kidney transplantation in 1954, an operation involving two identical twins and the donor being live.[18]
In an article in Experimental and Clinical Transplantation (2016), Hakim recalled being invited to Yemen by professor Hussain Al Kaff to visit Aden, Yemen to attend the first International Yemeni Conference on Nephro-Urology in March 2003, during the Iraq War.[19] During the visit, a Saudi team led by Faissal Shaheen from the Saudi Centre for Organ Transplantation, together with the Austrians, Robert Fitzgerald, Felix Stockenhuber and Annilies Fitzgerald, and Hakim who led Al Kaff's doctors from Aden, performed 10 operations, consisting of five living related kidney transplantations in one sitting over 20 hours, despite political instability and its near abandonment. These were the first kidney transplantations in the Arab world, which, as a result, led to the establishment of The Arab European Foundation, with the mission "to help poor Arab countries" and the motto of "poverty should not be a barrier to health or education!".[20][21][22]
As adjunct professor of transplantation surgery at Imperial College London,[27] in November 2013, he performed the first kidney transplant at the Garki Hospital in Abuja, Nigeria.[28][29] Over the subsequent five days, a total of eight living related kidney transplantations were performed at the hospital, and all using the finger assisted technique.[19]
In 2016, following a dispute about him operating on two private patients and an NHS patient on the same day in 2013, resulting in a subsequent suspension in 2014 and dismissal in 2015, he was reinstated by the Trust after a tribunal concluded that the dismissal was “unfair”.[12][30][31][32]
He has worked with several journals including editor-in-chief of International Surgery, and as editorial board member for Transplantation Proceedings and Graft,[6] and for the International Journal of Organ Transplantation Medicine.[35] With Jean-Michel Dubernard, and Earl Owen, he co-edited the textbook Composite Tissue Allograft. It included an introduction by Sir Roy Calne.[36] He co-edited the book Surgical Complications: Diagnosis and Treatment, which was reviewed by Sir Harold Ellis.[37]
Hakim is a supporter of the Conservative party[30] and has been involved in global health issues including the issue of 'black market organs' and the risks of the unregulated trade in organ donation.[38][39] He has been involved in collaborations tackling disease in Africa.[40][41] In 2019 he was appointed vice-president of the British Red Cross.[42]
Art and music
He is a portrait sculptor and in 2016 was winner of the Baron's Prize, Medical Art Society.[4] Hakim's list of busts include:
Having learnt to play the clarinet as a child, he continues to play and has recorded several CDs.[3] Some pieces have been conducted and performed with composer and multi-instrumentalist, Darryl John Kennedy. The Wisconsin television programme Look-In, featured them both performing the hymn Jerusalem, on a CD entitled A Promise for Peace and dedicated to the children of Lebanon.[53] Together, they also performed A Time Remembered, as a tribute to Air France pilot, Michel Bacos.[54]
Awards and honours
In 1989, during his travelling scholarship to the Soviet, Hakim was elected a member of the Soviet Surgical Society.[7] He has been awarded honorary professorships from the universities of Lyon, Peru, Ankara and São Paulo, and has been a visiting professor to several universities including Harvard University and the Cleveland Clinic.[5]
On 4 December 2008, at the World Congress of the ICS,[55] of which he was previously a president,[2][26] Hakim was appointed the first Max Thorek Professor of Surgery, an endowed chair of surgery set up in the name of Max Thorek who founded the ICS.[55] In 2010, he was awarded the Bailiff Grand Cross Order of St John of Jerusalem.[56] He became the 35th president of the ICS.[5] He has been president of the section of transplantation of the Royal Society of Medicine[2][10] and between 2014 and 2016 was the Society's vice president.[5]