Surgeons: At the Edge of Life is astounding TV

Five million major operations take place every year in the UK. And in the hospitals of NHS Lothian around Edinburgh, many of those procedures are pioneering, treating some of the rarest and most complex health conditions.

Where a programme like Channel 4’s 24 Hours in A&E shows us the realities of everyday emergency medicine, the BBC’s medical documentary series Surgeons: At the Edge of Life takes us into the operating theatres where leading doctors are pushing themselves to the limits to save lives.

The first episode of the seventh series takes in two such operations. The first is an exceptionally rare islet cell transplant for 21-year-old law student Sania, who has spent a decade in agony thanks to recurrent pancreatitis. The procedure – which involves removing her pancreas, extracting vital insulin and hormone-producing cells and transplanting them back into her liver – has only been performed in Scotland three times.

The other patient is 61-year-old Ed, who has kidney cancer. The removal of his tumour is complicated by the fact that the cancer has spread into his two renal veins and removal will involve cutting into his inferior vena cava, the largest vein in the body. Not only is there a high risk of catastrophic haemorrhage, but there’s also the chance that a fragment of tumor could detach and travel to his heart and kill him.

These are incredibly complicated surgeries but the series does an admirable job of communicating exactly what is going on in simple terms. Animated graphics effectively illustrate what we are watching while interviews with the surgeons themselves are enlightening as well as humanising. Their skills and expertise are world-leading but it is their communication, empathy and teamwork that allows them to make split second decisions that could result in someone living or dying.

In both cases, the stakes are as high as they can be and each operation is a race against time. Sania’s pancreas must be transported to a laboratory 11 miles away for the cells to be extracted before they are transported back for implantation, while for Ed, the trickiest and most dangerous part of the operation must be completed before his other kidney suffers any damage – every minute is vital.

Neither operation goes smoothly, with the team struggling to control Ed’s bleeding and an unexpected test result for Sania triggering incredibly tense discussions over whether or not to proceed with her transplant.

It should be emphasised that this is not a programme for watching over dinner. The cameras that take us behind the doors of the operating theatre also take us deep inside the patients themselves, revealing the interior of the human body in all its astonishing, pulsating, slimy, pink glory. I should admit that I watched the primary incisions through my fingers although my stomach strengthened as the episode progressed and curiosity got the better of me.

It is nothing short of remarkable to witness how surgery combines a need for both millimetre-perfect precision and a requirement for genuine brute force, as organs are shuffled around by agricultural-looking clamps, tape and rubber bands. But while the cameras access all areas of the body, there is a sensitivity to the filmmaking – neither patient is filmed in the immediate aftermath of their surgery as the series instead returns to them four months later to provide an update on their recovery.

As both an education and a celebration of the marvels of modern medicine, Surgeons: At the Edge of Life is astounding, gripping television. A stomach-churning but life-affirming programme that reinforces just how inordinately grateful we should all be for scientific advancement and the staff of the NHS who deliver its fruits.

‘Surgeons: At the Edge of Life’ continues next Friday at 9pm on BBC Two