South African Metabolic Medicine and Surgery Society

Everything You Must Know About HPB

Prof. Martin Brand completed his medical degree at the University of Pretoria, worked in the Republic of Ireland and completed his MRSC degree in 2006. He returned to South Africa to commence his general surgery training culminating in his FCS(SA) and MMed (Surgery) degrees.  He was the recipient of the Carnegie PhD Scholarship and completed his PhD in 2013 before sub-specializing in Surgical Gastroenterology with an interest in Hepatopancreaticobiliary Surgery. He received his Certification in 2014. Following this he worked for one year as a liver transplant fellow at Wits Donald Gordon Medi-Clinic and thereafter for one year in Singapore on a laparoscopic hepatopancreatic biliary surgery fellowship. Currently, he is the Head of HPB surgery at the University of Pretoria and Steve Biko Academic Hospital. Apart from clinical work, Martin is heavily involved in South African academia. At the school level, he chairs the PhD committee, supervises a range of research degrees from PhD to MMed, is involved in teaching medical students from 3rd year to 6th year, trains general surgery registrars and leads the surgical gastroenterology training program. He has been the secretary of the College of Surgeons SA for the past 7 years and has been integral to the modernization of the College as well as the Surgical Gastroenterology examinations. Outside of surgery is married with two children and races in Grand Fondo gravel cycling events. 

Establishing Metabolic Surgery in a Resource Constrained Environment

Bariatric Surgery in South Africa

Dr. Smit is a specialist general surgeon in SA focused on upper GIT surgery and bariatric surgery. During 2022 he was the secretary of the South African Metabolic Medicine and Surgery society which is part of the South African Society for endoscopic surgery (SASES), focussing on improving and expanding bariatric surgery in SA and also improving the training for minimal invasive surgery in SA. He is also  the co-founder of BSI Deep Health which is a health tech company that is focussed on using AI to improve surgical outcomes. Since 2022 he has been practicing at Zuid Afrikaans Hospital in Pretoria, where he runs a unit for upper GIT surgery and bariatric surgery together with Dr Francois Schutte. He is also involved with the IPIM network (Innovative Perioperative Information Management). This is a newly formed network where they are working to improve the collection of peri operative data and making that data available to specialists to improve the level of care and training and research in SA.