Dr Yow Vascular Malaysia

19/07/2026

WE HAD A GREAT REUNION WITH MY FORMER VASCULAR THEATRE SISTER, SR AZINA AYUB & HER HUSBAND, YURI AT THEIR HOME LAST MONTH.

IT WAS A GREAT HONOUR TO BE INVITED TO SISTER AZINA'S WEDDING TO ENCIK YURI BUT WE WERE UNFORTUNATELY STILL IN EUROPE AT THE TIME.

SO AFTERNOON TEA AT THEIR PLACE WAS JUST AS LOVELY...

It was so nice to chat to Azina & Yuri at their cosy home in the green outskirts of KL.

Sister Azina was the calm, cheerful & level-headed rock of our Vascular Theatre scrub team. No case or theatre kit was ever beyond her grasp when we needed it.

So good to reminisce about all the challenging Vascular cases we used to do in Pantai Hospital Kuala Lumpur. Apparently she & the Vascular OT team miss them too!

Carotid endarterectomies..
Upper & lower limb arterial bypasses..
Complex aortic cases..
Hybrid revascularisation procedures..

The good old days .. Miss them..

We now continue that journey Sri Kota Specialist Medical Centre

Perhaps someday, team, we'll meet again...

10/07/2026

GOOGLE 5-STAR REVIEW: WHEN A PATIENT COMES BACK TO YOU FOR THEIR SECOND MAJOR VASCULAR OPERATION, WE ARE GRATEFUL FOR THAT INCREDIBLE TRUST!

THIS 74-YEAR OLD PATIENT FROM INDONESIA CAME BACK TO MR YOW KUAN HENG, OUR CONSULTANT VASCULAR & ENDOVASCULAR SURGEON WHEN HE HAD SYMPTOMS OF SEVERE PERIPHERAL ARTERIAL DISEASE(PAD).

THIS WAS AFTER A SUCCESSFUL CAROTID ENDARTERECTOMY UNDER MR YOW WHICH PREVENTED A MAJOR STROKE.

The patient was particularly high risk due to his previous ischaemic heart disease, heart failure & diabetes.

Along with arterial disease in his carotids, brain circulation & legs, he was an extremely high risk case.

Mr Yow with his 22 years of experience in the UK National Health Service(NHS) and 8 years as an NHS Consultant Vascular & Endovascular Surgeon has been able to build a world-class Complex Vascular Surgery service here at Sri Kota Specialist Medical Centre.

His experience spans not just Vascular & Endovascular Surgery but Vascular Trauma, Advanced Wound Care, Infection Control, Surgical Safety Protocols, Nutrition, Recovery & Critical Care in the Frail & Elderly.

Along with his experienced Vascular Anaesthetic & Intensivist colleague, Dr Sham Kumar Sathinand, they were able to deliver safe & excellent outcomes in not one but 2 complex & high risk Vascular procedures.

This is not just a testament to excellent technical skills but great leadership, team-building & sound clinical judgement. Not to mention great communication & warmth as so eloquently described by the patient's daughter.

Careful communication & compassion are incredibly important for what must be such a stressful time for family & loved ones.

THANK YOU AGAIN FOR PLACING THAT TRUST IN US!

09/07/2026

Do your bit to stop plastic pollution... it matters to your health...

Microplastics enter your body via drinking water & has been linked to increased strokes, arterial disease & cancer.

Now it can increase the rise of antibiotics-resistant bacteria.

Here's how you can help..

Refuse : Next time someone brings you your iced coffee in a plastic cup, send it back. Better still, ask before you order if it comes in plastic. If it does, tell them you want it in a glass or don't order it.

Reuse: Every bit of plastic you throw out enters landfill or drains. Reusing it prevents it. We re-use plastic bags to carry our loose fruit or onions in the supermarket.

Recycle: This is the last resort only because recycling rates are low. 30% at best. Best thing you can do is take all your plastics to the recycling centre pls & sort it yourself.

Refuse, Re-use, Recycle...

Your health depends on it...

Plastic pollution is among the gravest environmental crises facing humanity. Plastic production since 1950 has exceeded 8,300 million metric tons, with most plastic waste ending up in the environment, affecting wildlife, ecosystem functionality, and human health. Simultaneously, the ability of disea...

28/06/2026

Woohoo!!...

Will you be taking the LRT3 tomorrow? 🚄 READ: https://says.com/my/lifestyle/lrt3-finally-open-29-june-list-stations-and-places-you-get-to

27/06/2026

A PRODUCTIVE & INSIGHTFUL DAY AT THE JOINT MALAYSIAN COLLEGE OF SURGEONS MEDICO LEGAL SOCIETY OF MALAYSIA(MLSM) EXPERT WITNESS WORKSHOP 2 WEEKS AGO.

DELIGHTED TO CATCH UP WITH MY FORMER ASEAN SCHOLAR & NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE(NUS) LAW SCHOOL CLASS-MATE, SHANTI ABRAHAM.

I may not have mentioned this before, but I took up the offer of the ASEAN scholarship in Singapore to do my GCSE 'A' Levels under the misplaced hope of a place in NUS MED School.

Although I was interviewed for both Medical School & Law School in NUS, the seemingly-wise ones in NUS decided to stick me in Law School despite Med School being my 1st choice.

So I spent 2 years in NUS Law School before being offered a place in Med School in Dublin. Shanti was also an ASEAN scholar & my Law School class mate & we've kept in touch over the years as good friends.

Shanti now runs her own Law firm & is lawyer-mediator extraordinaire in many corporate & medicolegal cases. She is also a former President of MLSM.

Mediation is now seen as a progressive & more productive use of time & financial resources for parties in dispute & Shanti is one of its champions.

I remain grateful for my 2 years in one of the world's most prestigious Law Faculties. I learnt Contract, Property, Criminal Law, Tort & the laws of defamation, negligence amongst others.

My legal training has served me well in my surgical career, in management & as a medicolegal expert

With my dual training background, I am currently on the expert witness panel of a number of large law firms for medicolegal cases.

So it was a delight to hear Shanti speak & exchange ideas with fellow senior surgeons, expert witnesses, a High Court judge & other lawyers on the medicolegal landscape of Malaysia.

In particular, how we can improve medicolegal reports, the importance of an impartial, well-trained expert witness to achieve better patient safety in Malaysian healthcare & contain escalating costs.

I also got to catch up with my dear friend & mentor, Prof Dr Liew Ngoh Chin, Consultant Vascular Surgeon & President of the Malaysian College of Surgeons.

21/06/2026

HYBRID VASCULAR SURGERY : COMBINES OPEN VASCULAR SURGERY WITH ENDOVASCULAR/MINIMALLY INVASIVE TECHNIQUES LIKE ANGIOPLASTY & STENTING TO ACHIEVE BEST POSSIBLE OUTCOMES FOR PATIENTS.

OPEN VASCULAR SURGERY SUCH AS BYPASS & ENDARTERECTOMIES (REMOVING PLAQUES BLOCKING AN ARTERY) HAS THE BENEFIT OF DURABILITY

ENDOVASCULAR SURGERY(ANGIOPLASTY & STENTS) CLOSE UP FASTER BUT ARE LESS STRESS ON THE PATIENT.

HYBRID VASCULAR SURGERY COMBINES THE BEST OF BOTH WORLDS.

Hybrid Vascular Surgery allows modern Vascular & Endovascular Surgeons like Dr Yow to operate on an older, frailer group of patients safely to achieve limb salvage.

This 70 year-old Indonesian patient had previously had a successful carotid endarterectomy for stroke prevention under Dr Yow Kuan Heng, our Consultant Vascular & Endovascular Surgeon.

He was an ex-smoker. He had diabetes, heart failure & a previous coronary artery bypass. As such, he was very high risk for any major open surgery.

He came to Dr Yow again with night-time rest pain & numbness in BOTH legs. He also had short distance claudication of 10m.

Without intervention, he was at risk of double limb amputations.

Dr Yow Kuan Heng along with Consultant Interventional Radiologist, Dr Sivakumaran performed Sri Kota's first BILATERAL hybrid revascularisation and saved BOTH the patient's legs.

Dr Yow, firstly removed obstructing plaques from both groin(femoral)arteries & widened them by stitching a Vascular patch onto the vessels.

Dr Yow & Dr Siva then performed balloon angioplasty & stenting on both pelvic(iliac) arteries. The left iliac artery had a Chronic Total Occlusion(CTO).

With the Critical Care team led by Dr Sham Kumar, we were able to get the patient safely home.

The patient is now pain-free & walking as far as he wants.

This is a remarkable achievement requiring great technical skill & clinical judgement from our Major Vascular team!

18/06/2026

You go girl! And Barack...

14/06/2026

ICELAND : LAND OF OTHERWORDLY BEAUTY, UNPRONOUNCEABLE NAMES & QUIRKY CREATIVE PERSONALITIES...

AND RENEWABLE ENERGY POWERHOUSE.

Otherworldly beauty: Where every turn of the road opens up another vista that takes your breath away...

So otherworldly that multiple film-makers, particularly sci fi, have chosen Iceland as locations for alternative worlds: Ridley Scott's 'Alien: Prometheus', Christopher Nolan's 'InterStellar', Tom Cruise's 'Oblivion'... the list goes on..

Unpronounceable names: I, who consider myself pretty good with foreign names & languages, struggled..

Quirky, creative personalities: The Icelanders have not only carved a life out of a beautiful but barren, volcanic island but are chirpy, funny & so creative they have thrived here.

Cue Bjork & her music... Cue how they used leftover hot water from their geothermal plant to build one of the world's most profitable yet attractive tourist attractions, the Blue Lagoon thermal spa..

RENEWABLE ENERGY LEADERS: 100% of Iceland's electricity is from renewable sources, either geothermal, hydro-electric or wind.

It is so successful that Iceland has one of the cheapest electricity bills in the world.

This has made them less exposed to any rising oil prices from international crises.

This has led to the 2nd highest per capita new Electric Vehicle usage in the world. Icelandic roads are filled with Teslas.

As Malaysians, we really can & should try emulate the Icelanders in weaning ourselves off our addiction to our big petrol/diesel cars.. Fewer Mercedes, Vellfires & Ford Rangers will mean :

1. Cheaper fuel bills
2. Cleaner air: Your lungs are less at risk of cancer & asthma
3. Less heat: Both from the direct heat of emissions & the tree-clearing needed for concrete car parks.

So aside from...

Seeing the meeting place of the American & Eurasian tectonic plates,
Spotting orcas, minke whales & dolphins
Glacier walking,
Ice caving,
Campervanning near an active volcano..

As always, we saw more of how people do some things better in another place & culture...

04/06/2026

BACK IN CORNWALL WITH OLD NHS COLLEAGUES & FAMILY FRIENDS...

Robin, my NHS Vascular Consultant colleague... with whom I have done many a tough case together & where we both reinforced the importance of integrity in the NHS management structures.. we have both been forged in fire & come out stronger, better Vascular Surgeons & professionals...

Paul, my Nurse Specialist in Truro & his wife, Qiu, Operating Theatre Practitioner..

Jon, my very capable website designer at Sharkfin Media..

And old tennis team-mates, Mike & Archie from Truro Lawn Tennis Club...

Tennis on my favourite grass & clay courts..
Wild swimming in the 2 deg waters of the Cornish Atlantic, Dog walking in ancient woodland,
BBQs on the beach with friends,
Grilled wild octopus from our regular fisherman, Chris fresh off his trawler the night before..

Most importantly, catching up with old friends & colleagues who are just as much family as our own...

Priceless...

And more on our food choices...

Fast Fact No 1: Wild octopus is one of the healthiest & tastiest seafood around. It is low in cholesterol & high in protein.

Fast Fact No 2: It is taking over Cornish seas due to climate change & fishermen are landing them in huge numbers. They are hence sustainable & cheap.

Fast Fact No 3: Cornish seafood is cheaper & healthier because fishermen are encouraged to fish sustainably, the seas are kept plastic-free & cared for in every way. We once bought a 2kg fresh wild sea bass off Chris for £8. This was an absolute bargain..

One of the reasons Malaysian seafood is so expensive & costs rising is because we chop down our mangroves & destroy our coral reefs, which are fish hatcheries. Fish stocks are collapsing due to collapse of fish reproduction, overfishing & plastic pollution. So when demand exceeds supply, seafood prices skyrocket.

So we can ensure our food security is looked after by choosing sustainable seafood types, reducing plastic waste & using your buying power as a consumer to avoid property & commercial companies that damage our mangroves, forests & seas.