Soon after the veterinarians at the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium discovered a large tumor on the liver of Shaila, a 19-year-old gorilla, they contacted Allan Tsung, MD, director of surgical oncology and a specialist in liver, bile duct and pancreatic cancer. When he listened to their message, “I thought it was a practical joke from one of my friends,” Tsung said. It wasn’t, and in this episode, Tsung describes the rather unusual and fascinating surgery he would perform on Shaila to remove a tumor on her liver the size of a softball – and what he learned from the experience. The liver of a gorilla is “almost identical [to a human liver] in terms of blood vessels and bile ducts and the size,” he said, adding the surgery was a team effort between his James surgical team and the skilled veterinarians at the zoo. “I was very nervous and the last thing I wanted was a bad outcome,” said Tsung, who added his strategy was to think of Shaila as “a human patient and, besides cutting through the skin, which is much thicker than human skin, everything was similar to a human patient.” He learned a trick veterinarians use to keep animals from picking at and pulling apart their sutures that involves bright nail polish - and was quite effective.