Dr Tan Teck Wei is a urologist at Mount Elizabeth Hospitals, Singapore.
Besides treating general urologic conditions including urinary stones, benign prostate enlargement, bladder diseases and men’s health issues, his sub-specialty interest is in the management of urological cancers including that of the bladder, prostate, kidney and testis.
Dr Tan was formerly a consultant urologist and director of genitourinary oncology at Tan Tock Seng Hospital (TTSH).
He graduated from the National University of Singapore (NUS) and completed his specialist urology training at TTSH and Singapore General Hospital. Awarded the Health Manpower Development Plan Award, he went on to complete his advanced fellowship training in robotic surgery and uro-oncology at Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospitals in London, UK.
He was the earliest non-UK-trained urologist to be awarded this fellowship, which is accredited by the Royal College of Surgeons of England and the British Association of Urological Surgeons. He was trained in open, laparoscopic and robot-assisted cancer surgeries including cystectomy, prostatectomy, intracorporeal urinary diversion, pelvic exenteration and nephrectomy/nephroureterectomy.
On his return to Singapore and while at TTSH, Dr Tan chaired the urology tumour board and initiated a number of programmes and medical procedures including MRI-targeted prostate biopsy, transperineal prostate biopsy under local anaesthesia, Retzius-sparing robot-assisted radical prostatectomy, robot-assisted cystectomy/anterior pelvic exenteration with intracorporeal urinary diversion, and the enhanced recovery after cystectomy programme. He also regularly collaborated with his general surgery colleagues on pelvic exenteration cases for complex gastrointestinal cancers.
Experienced in MRI-targeted prostate biopsies, he is an advisor for the Ministry of Health’s Agency for Care Effectiveness, which has successfully obtained approval for this type of biopsy to be the standard of care for the evaluation of men suspected of having prostate cancer in Singapore.
Besides his clinical work, he was an adjunct assistant professor at NUS’ Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine and a clinical teacher at the Nanyang Technological University-Imperial College London’s Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine.
Dr Tan is an international consulting editor for the Indian Journal of Urology, and is a reviewer for numerous medical journals including the British Journal of Urology International, Prostate Cancer and Prostatic Diseases, and the Asia-Pacific Journal of Clinical Oncology. He also sits on the executive committee of the Singapore Urological Association and is a board member of the Chapter of Urologists in the College of Surgeons, Singapore.
Since 2018, he has performed more than 140 robot-assisted surgeries. He is a recipient of the Long Service Award at TTSH.