Bill Proudman sets up 1965 kidney transplant, Australia first at TQEH, Adelaide; a surgical mentor for decades
Bill Proudman, receiving the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons' 2015 Sir Henry Newland Award for distinguished service from fellow David Walsh. Bottom right: Proudman's book In the Beginning: The Formative Years of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital .
Bill Proudman who, with Dr Peter Knight, in 1965 performed Australia’s first successful live donor renal transplant at The Queen Elizabeth Hospital in the Adelaide suburb of Woodville, was a valued mentor to students and surgeons throughout his career, with “Proudman’s rules of surgery” continuing to be quoted.
Proudman was a surgeon in the broadest non-specialist sense, involved in teaching, research, examining, mentoring, innovation, leadership plus clinical and technical excellence in surgery.
After attending Glenelg Primary School and St Peter’s College, Proudman graduated from medicine at Adelaide University in 1951 and was surgical registrar at the Royal Adelaide Hospital three years later.
He moved to Britain and became a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons. Back in Adelaide in 1959, became a fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons and first senior registrar in surgery at The Queen Elizabeth Hospital – where he stayed until retirement in 1993. At the hospital, he taught in many disciplines (particularly endocrine surgery) and was head of 4A surgical unit for many years.
For the 1965 Australia-first live donor renal transplant at The Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Proudman played a leading role in gaining approval of the ethics committee for the controversial use of a live donor and helped plan protocols for renal transplants when immunosuppressive medication was in its infancy.
Proudman removed a viable kidney from the donor 56-year-old Domenic Centofanti despite a blood vessel anomaly. The kidney was transplanted in Centofanti's son in law Peter Tirimacco, 33, by surgeon Peter Knight and renal unit director professor Jim Lawrence. The marathon double operation took most of the day and, with the help of immunosuppression drugs to stop his body from rejecting the organ, the surgery was a success. Tirimacco lived for another 11 years.
Proudman's decades of knowledge, clinical skills and judgment surgical service were highly sought after and valued by generations of students and colleagues. He served the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons as an examiner for eight years, becoming deputy chair. Proudman also was instrumental in the setting up Adelaide suburban Western Community Hospital. He also had a successful private practice and provided a surgical service to Kapunda Hospital.
Proudman wrote In the Beginning: The Formative Years of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital book in retirement. In 2017, he received an Order of Australia award for distinguished service to medicine after the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons awarded him the Sir Henry Newland Award for distinguished service.
Among the list of "Proudman’s Laws" he provided on all surgical dilemmas were: “The incidence of post-operative complications is inversely proportional to the need for the operation”.
