Michael Alexander

Biography

Dr. Alexander, from St. Lucia in the West Indies, graduated in medicine in 1969 from the University of Lagos, Nigeria. The Biafran War was on at the time and because of the shortage of doctors, even though he was only a House Officer (Intern), he was posted to the Nigerian Army and made the Commanding Officer with the rank of Captain for a 1,100-man field ambulance unit. He was the only doctor for 20,000 troops along a 30-mile section of front lines. The war ended while he was at the front lines but his experience there allowed him to obtain a residency position to train in surgery once he returned to the University of Lagos. He moved to Canada in 1971 where he repeated internship at St. Michael’s Hospital, Toronto, then got into the Gallie Program to retrain in surgery obtaining his FRCSC in 1976. From 1976 to 1977 he was a clinical fellow with Dr. Mervyn Deitel at St. Joseph’s Health Centre, Toronto, where he did specialized training and research in intensive care and parenteral nutrition. In 1977 he joined the Shouldice Hospital as a staff surgeon and in July 2006 was made the Chief Surgeon and Chief of Staff. As a clinical surgeon, Dr. Alexander has performed over 25,000 hernia repairs, including over 1,000 incisional repairs on patients from all over the world. He has conducted workshops and demonstrated hernia surgery at different venues, including Banaras Hindu University in Varanasi, India, and in Slovenia, and Taiwan. Apart from these, he has lectured at meetings of The Royal College of Surgeons of Canada, The American College of Surgeons, The American Society of Abdominal Surgeons, The Pan Pacific Surgical Society, The Harvard Surgical Society and The Association of Hospital Surgeons of Italy. In June 2009, he was appointed the Honorary President of the Taiwanese Hernia Association. Dr. Alexander is an adjunct lecturer in the Department of Surgery at the University of Toronto and coordinates visits to the Shouldice Hospital by University of Toronto medical students.

Research Interest

Research into the metabolic cause of hernias History of medicine