48 years, 83,000 anaesthetics a year, and a mortality below one in a million
To walk into the Anaesthesia and Surgery Centre of West China Hospital in Chengdu is to step into what is, by staff count and clinical volume, one of the largest anaesthesia services in the world. The centre began as an anaesthesia group in the early 1950s, became an independent clinical department in 1978 under Professor Min Longqiu, and in 2015 merged with the hospital's operating-theatre service into a single Anaesthesia and Surgery Centre under the leadership of Professor Liu Jin — the first clinically trained anaesthesiology PhD in China. Today the centre runs more than 1,300 clinical, nursing, and training staff, including 23 doctoral supervisors, 50 master's supervisors, 211 anaesthesia nurses, and 317 operating-theatre nurses, and delivers more than 83,000 anaesthetics a year, with an anaesthesia-related mortality below one in a million — a figure that places the centre at the international leading level. In the 2024 Fudan Hospital Specialty Reputation Rankings, the centre was named China's leading anaesthesiology unit for the 13th consecutive year.
The centre's role in the country is not just clinical. It was one of the first anaesthesiology departments in China to run a structured residency training programme (2000), and today it trains more than 300 residents a year — the largest anaesthesia residency cohort of any single Chinese hospital. It is a national training base for paediatric anaesthesiology subspecialists (2018). It has held the No.1 position in the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences' hospital science-and-technology evaluation (STEM) anaesthesiology ranking for five consecutive years.
What the place actually looks like
Where most anaesthesia services in the world are organised around a small number of subspecialties (cardiac, obstetric, paediatric), the West China centre is organised around thirteen. Its subspecialty groups cover: neurosurgical anaesthesia; cardiopulmonary bypass; anaesthesia outside the operating theatre; urological anaesthesia; the post-anaesthesia care unit and acute pain service; chronic pain medicine; thoracic and cardiac anaesthesia; orthopaedic anaesthesia; general-surgery anaesthesia; eye, ear, nose and throat anaesthesia; paediatric surgical anaesthesia; perioperative point-of-care ultrasound; and emergency and trauma anaesthesia. The centre's cardiac anaesthesia team supports one of the largest adult cardiac surgery programmes in western China, and its paediatric anaesthesia team supports one of the largest paediatric surgery programmes in the country.
That structural choice — a single centre that handles every kind of surgery in every kind of patient, with the country's largest anaesthesia residency training programme attached — is the operational reason the West China centre has been able to lead the Chinese field for more than a decade. A patient who walks in for a complex liver, cardiac, or neurosurgical operation can be anaesthetised by a team that has done more of the same case than any other Chinese team has, and by an acute pain service that covers every postoperative bed on the same campus.
Why it became No.1
Three factors explain the West China centre's grip on the Fudan ranking. First, the historical first-mover position: the department was one of the first in China to be established as an independent clinical anaesthesiology department (1978) and the first to build a full 13-subspecialty coverage under one roof. Second, an unmatched training output: Professor Liu Jin, who has led the centre since 2000, introduced the modern structured residency training programme to Chinese anaesthesiology, and the centre has trained most of the anaesthesiology chairs now in post at China's leading tertiary hospitals. Third, and most distinctive clinically, the centre's anaesthesia-related mortality — below one in a million — is at the international leading level and is the figure most often quoted in Chinese anaesthesiology as the benchmark the rest of the country is working toward.
That history matters for international patients because anaesthesia safety, more than any other single factor, determines whether a complex operation in China carries the same risk profile as the same operation in Europe or North America.
What this means for international patients
For a foreign patient considering complex surgery in China, the West China Anaesthesia and Surgery Centre is the place that handles the cases the rest of the country refers out. The centre runs an international patient office and a multilingual case-coordination service. It is the host of the Sichuan University Anaesthesiology Research Institute and of the national residency training programme in anaesthesiology, which means its clinical protocols are the de facto standard for anaesthesia care in western China and a reference for the rest of the country.
The centre's specialty areas are anchored to internationally recognised strengths: cardiothoracic anaesthesia (where its annual case volume is among the largest in western China), neuroanaesthesia (where its caseload is the largest in the country), paediatric anaesthesia (where it is a national subspecialty training base), and perioperative point-of-care ultrasound (where its protocols are used in teaching hospitals across China). The centre is at No. 37 Guoxue Alley, Wuhou District, Chengdu. This profile is editorial information based on the sources linked below, not treatment advice; individual outcomes depend on the operation, the patient's comorbidities, the team, and the timing of presentation.