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There is something endearing about sitting down with two world class oral and maxillofacial surgeons, who happen to be brothers, and starting the interview with a conversation about their mother.
That’s what happened when Mahurangi Matters was invited to the Rodney Surgical Centre recently to meet Drs Peter and Russell Vickers, who are the most recent additions to the centre’s growing list of visiting specialists.
As it turns out, they have another brother who is also an oral and maxillofacial surgeon. So, the obvious first question was, “Were they all following in their parents’ footsteps?”
“We grew up in Manly Sydney where Dad was a builder and Mum, who left school at 14, had five boys to look after. She was working in a bank at 15 to help her family make ends meet and has memories of the Japanese submarines attacking allied ships in Sydney Harbour during World War II. She taught swimming when she was young and went back to the sport competitively around 70, going on to win in national and world championships. She’ll be 97 in a couple of months and is still quite amazing.”
The brothers agree that their parents worked hard and they have probably inherited this strong work ethic.
“Growing up in a poor family gave us an advantage in a way because anything we wanted came secondhand, so we got very good at fixing things!”
Peter, who is the eldest, trained first in medicine and dentistry, and worked in a number of cities and regional centres in Australia, as well as Scotland, the United Kingdom and the United States.
His training encompassed everything from craniofacial surgery and head and neck surgery to reconstructive, trauma, cosmetic and dental surgery, including implants. He also spent a good part of his time teaching at Macquarie University Hospital in Sydney.
He says he was drawn to NZ after youth hostelling here with his children and running marathons. On his performance in the races, he is content to say that he finished all three marathons he entered, which was more than a lot of the younger competitors managed to do.
He also likes the climate and geography of NZ, and plans to move from Auckland to a permanent base in the north sometime next year.
Brother Russell is also contemplating a permanent shift across the Tasman, but is still heavily committed to patients in Sydney, so is criss-crossing between the two countries at the moment. He is a hiker rather than a runner, and loves to surf and paint.
As well as being an oral and maxillofacial surgeon, he will eventually bring new skills to the Rodney Surgical Centre as an internationally recognised expert in pain management, regenerative medicine and stem cell treatments.
His research work is reflected in 78 scientific and medical publications, and he runs world-class pain clinics in Sydney and China.
His enthusiasm for stem cell treatments, which he describes as safe and more effective than pharmaceutical treatments and drugs, dates back to 2010, when early stem cell treatments, using donor stem cells, were showing promise.
In 2014, he published the world’s first report on how a person’s own stem cells were very effective in relieving severe nerve pain, the sort of pain people might get from trauma, infection, phantom pain, cluster headaches, migraines and shingles.
“Taking out wisdom teeth is more traumatic than a stem cell procedure,” he says. “The surgery is done under local anaesthetic and takes about an hour. It involves extracting the stem cells, isolating them and then putting them into areas where there is nerve damage.
“Recovery is gradual over weeks and months, but patients typically start feeling better within a couple of days. It offers people with chronic pain a much better quality of life.”
Russell says he is no longer surprised by some of the unexpected changes that stem cell treatments deliver.
When treating male hair loss, for example, the new hair re-grows as if the patient is a 20-year-old. The same results can be seen in the face, which possibly explains why he has had enquiries from New York about the cosmetic applications of his work.
“There are few, if any, other surgeons doing this particular type of surgery because to do stem cells for the head and the face you have to be a maxillofacial surgeon. There are major blood vessels and nerves in this region of the body, so you have to know the head and neck anatomy intimately. This is critical for the safety of the patient.”
