Dr. Hiromi Shinya

1935 - 2021
Medical Trailblazer, Dr. Hiromi Shinya, Dies at 86

Dr. Hiromi Shinya, a pioneer of modern colonoscopy and inventor of the polypectomy snare, has died in Tokyo, Japan. He was 86 years old.

Dr. Shinya was born on March 6, 1935, to Jisaburo and Sugano Shingai in Yanagawa, Japan, a small town in southern Japan. He was the third of seven children. From a young age, Dr. Shinya dreamed of becoming a doctor. He graduated from Juntendo Medical School in Tokyo, Japan then interned at Yokosuka Naval Base. There, he applied for an opportunity of a lifetime to do a residency in New York City. From about 900 applicants, he was chosen and landed at Mount Sinai Beth Israel Hospital in 1963.

In 1969, with the support of Olympus Optical Company, Dr. Shinya and Dr. William Wolff developed the colonoscope. They used fiber optics which enabled the instrument to reach far beyond other scopes in use at the time. This clinical advancement permitted visual examination of the intestinal tract into the cecum. Later, Dr. Shinya designed the "Shinya snare," an electrosurgical wire apparatus threaded through in a colonoscope for the removal of polyps without invasive surgery. Using the polypectomy snare, Dr. Shinya developed modern colonoscopic techniques in use today. Dr. Wolff and Dr. Shinya first described their surgical procedure in The New England Journal of Medicine in 1973; in 1999 the journal, Seminars in Colon & Rectal Surgery called it one of the 20th century's dozen landmark articles in the field.

After his first polypectomy using the snare in 1969, Dr. Shinya became world-famous and lectured internationally. For many years, Dr. Shinya practiced at his private clinic in New York's midtown on the east side. He also served as the Chief of Surgical Endoscopy at Beth Israel Hospital and was Professor of Surgery at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Through extensive screening of the many polyps Dr. Shinya removed, he observed that a significant number of them were precancerous. His technique and findings have potentially saved millions of lived from intestinal cancer through early detection and treatment. To date, there have been over 19 million colonoscopies performed in the US. Dr. Shinya wrote many books of which Colonoscopy: Diagnosis and Treatment of Colonic Diseases is the most well-known.

Dr. Shinya retired in 2012. He was known for his generosity and sense of humor in the operating room. A man of many talents, Dr. Shinya would often sing for his patients in the waiting room and he played different musical instruments such as the flute, guitar, violin, clarinet, piano, mandolin and cello. In 1963, Dr. Shinya married Miyoko Mogi who passed away in 1988. They had two children, Erica Shinya Kim (1963-present) and Hiroshi Shinya (1965-1995).

On December 9, 2021, Dr. Shinya passed away from acute heart failure.
Dr. Shinya had a lifelong dream to help people through medical research and innovation. He will be remembered as a pioneer who developed groundbreaking medical tools and procedures which have shaped modern colonoscopy.