A letter from the ‘god father’ of Breast Radiology – Prof Laszlo Tabar from Sweden after reading the editorial published in the Indian Journal of Surgery…

The Randomised controlled trial that Prof Tabar championed in 1980s was the first to show that SCREENING MAMMOGRAMS SAVES LIVES & has since served as a benchmark for many other trials world over that have reinforced the evidence base in this regard.

From: Laszlo Tabar
Date: 3 November 2021 at 3:19:04 AM IST
To: “P. Raghu Ram”
Subject: Re: Editorial, Indian Journal of Surgery

Raghu, my dear Friend,

• At last I had time to read through the wonderful paper you sent to me. Many thoughts crossed my mind during the time I read it, the first one was: congratulations to you for having been strong and able to make your dream come true!
• It is a remarkable accomplishment that you can report after ten short years, when others just dream but never accomplish anything tangible. I thoroughly enjoyed the sincere tone of your paper, the hurdles that not even you could avoid…but the entire paper is so full of optimism, wisdom and positive tone that it is a pleasure to read.
• Many thanks for your kind words describing my humble contribution, I appreciate it.
• I appreciated that you cited our paper which should get more attention in the medical community. I trained the personnel and physicians for as much as half of the country of Sweden during the 1990s (selected the 20 best out of 182 doctors …and their results have been published now). It is a major accomplishment in medicine that participation in service screening cut back mortality (not only survival, but death from the disease) by as much as 50%!!
• All of us who know you admire and are proud of the fabulous accomplishments, the heroic work you carried out in India.
• There is much more to talk about but it is late night – again. I carry very warm memories about the short time and dinner I spent in your beautiful home. I was happy to take a few nice photographs of your Dad.

Please keep in touch and once again, congratulations – most of all for what you have done, but documenting all that was very important!

Please give my best regards to your lovely wife, without them we would not have accomplished much.

Your old-time pal
Laszlo