Hashim Salar

Final-year medical student at the Aga Khan University, Karachi. I work on randomised trials, systematic reviews, surgical and imaging research and medical education, and write the code that analyses them.

About

I’m a final-year MBBS candidate at the Aga Khan University in Karachi. Most of my research asks whether a treatment, device or programme that works elsewhere still works in Pakistani hospitals and schools, where staff, equipment and money are stretched thinner.

That question runs across study designs. In the AKU neonatal unit I’m a co-author on a randomised crossover trial of automated oxygen control in preterm infants and on two trials of non-invasive ventilation, and I’m first author of TANS, a double-blind trial of topical tranexamic acid in children’s heart surgery. I’m joint first author of meta-analyses on pain flare after palliative radiotherapy and on diabetic retinopathy in Pakistan, and of a systematic review of simulation training for mechanical thrombectomy. I also sit on the steering committee of PakSurg, a prospective study of surgical site infection across 28 Pakistani hospitals.

In 2026 I trained in the United States: a vascular surgery sub-internship at the University of New Mexico, interventional and diagnostic radiology at Cleveland Clinic, where I co-authored a review of interventional oncology for liver cancer, and imaging research with Dr Shadpour Demehri at Johns Hopkins on deep-learning measures of bone and muscle from CT.

A growing part of my work is about how doctors learn and are judged. I built and validated the abstract scoring tool for AKU’s International Student Research Conference, study who gets protected research time and who reviews for surgical journals, and build teaching tools such as theVascular Surgery Field Guide andOnlyStats.

Before medicine I studied natural and computational sciences at Minerva University. I analyse my own data in R, Stata and Python, and since 2021 have co-led National Science Bowl Pakistan, now the subject of a randomised trial across 185 schools. I’m open to collaboration, and to research mentorship in surgery, interventional radiology and medical education.

Studying
MBBS, the Aga Khan University, 2021 to present
Rotations in the US
Vascular surgery, University of New Mexico; interventional and diagnostic radiology, Cleveland Clinic
Research training
Johns Hopkins (Demehri Lab), Cleveland Clinic (Gadani Lab), and three laboratories at AKU
Examinations
USMLE Step 1, passed January 2026; ACR–AMSER STARS, 92% (national average 74.4%)
Clinical interests
Interventional radiology, vascular surgery, general surgery
Before medicine
Natural and Computational Sciences, Minerva University, 2020 to 2021
Methods
Meta-analysis, causal inference with propensity scores, survival analysis, machine learning, RNA-seq
Software
R, Stata, Python, SPSS, RevMan, NVivo; medical image segmentation
Languages
English, Urdu

Latest

  1. October 2026

    Review of interventional oncology for hepatocellular carcinoma published in Cancers

  2. September 2026

    Randomised crossover trial of automated oxygen control in preterm infants posted as a preprint

  3. July 2026

    Adjuvant chemotherapy in early-onset mucinous colon cancer published in the Journal of Surgical Oncology

  4. June 2026

    PakSurg 1, the first national estimate of surgical site infection in Pakistan, published in The Lancet Regional Health – Southeast Asia

  5. 2026

    Sub-internships in vascular surgery at the University of New Mexico and interventional radiology at Cleveland Clinic; research with the Demehri Lab at Johns Hopkins and the Gadani Lab at Cleveland Clinic

  6. 2026

    Two Outstanding Poster Awards at the International Student Research Conference

  7. April 2026

    1st place at the RUFAYDA Anti-Burnout Hackathon for Baat Karo

  8. January 2026

    Passed USMLE Step 1

Research

Four lines of work, colour-coded the same way everywhere on this site: teal for studies that collect new data, plum for studies that pool existing evidence.

Topics

The same work, sorted by subject. Each topic opens a filtered list of papers.

  • Surgery

    Outcomes, techniques and quality of care in general, colorectal, robotic and vascular surgery.

    13 papers, 10 presentations, 3 projects

  • Imaging and interventional radiology

    Interventional oncology, embolisation, quantitative CT and MRI, and image-based biomarkers.

    6 papers, 3 presentations, 1 project

  • Medical education and research equity

    Simulation, assessment tools, and who gets the chance to do and review research.

    4 papers, 5 presentations, 4 projects

  • Neonatal and paediatric care

    Respiratory support and jaundice screening for newborns, and paediatric case reports.

    5 papers, 1 presentation, 3 projects

  • Oncology

    Locoregional liver cancer therapy, early-onset colon cancer and palliative radiotherapy.

    3 papers, 3 presentations

  • AI and digital health

    Closed-loop devices, smartphone diagnostics, robotic performance data and AI adoption.

    4 papers, 1 presentation, 4 projects

  • Global health and sustainability

    National estimates for Pakistan and the environmental footprint of surgical care.

    5 papers, 1 presentation, 2 projects

  • Infection and sepsis

    Surgical site infection and antimicrobial use, cost and outcomes in sepsis.

    2 papers, 3 projects

  • Cardiovascular

    Atrial fibrillation ablation, valve surgery, AI-read ECGs and cardiothoracic research equity.

    4 presentations, 4 projects

Selected publications

All publications
  1. Advances in interventional oncology for hepatocellular carcinoma

    Gadani S, Chou E, Chansangrat J, Salar H, Kapoor B

    Cancers. 2026;18(20):3319

    Written with the Gadani Lab, Interventional Oncology Research Laboratory, Cleveland Clinic.

    Reviews transarterial chemoembolisation and radioembolisation, image-guided ablation, combination immunotherapy and emerging locoregional treatments for liver cancer.

    Narrative review
  2. Impact of adjuvant chemotherapy on overall survival in early-onset stage II–III mucinous adenocarcinoma of the colon: a propensity-based analysis

    Waqar U, Rupji M, Salar M, Salar H, Devin CL, Olson TJP, Liu Y, Sullivan P, Rosen SA

    Journal of Surgical Oncology. 2026;134(5):720–729

    Presented as a podium talk at the Society of Surgical Oncology Annual Meeting 2025.

    In 3,333 patients under 50 in the National Cancer Database, adjuvant chemotherapy improved survival in stage III (HR 0.71) but not in stage II.

    Registry analysis
  3. Epidemiology and risk factors of surgical site infections in elective surgeries in Pakistan (2022–2023): a multicentre, prospective cohort study from PakSurg 1

    Waqar U, Ahmed S, Fatimi AS, et al.; PakSurg Collaborative

    Collaborator and steering committee member, PakSurg Collaborative

    The Lancet Regional Health – Southeast Asia. 2026;50:100786

    In 1,711 patients across 28 hospitals, 9.5% developed a surgical site infection after elective surgery: the first national estimate for Pakistan.

    Cohort studyCited by 1
  4. Automated versus manual oxygen control in preterm infants on respiratory support: a randomised crossover trial

    Hussain AS, Yousuf HMA, Salar M, Salar H, Munir R, Schmölzer G, Hoodbhoy Z, Rizvi A, Khan U, Zakai F

    Research Square. Posted 3 September 2026

    In 25 preterm infants, automated control raised time in the oxygen saturation target range from 37.8% to 55.9% and halved severe desaturations.

    Randomised crossover trialPreprint
  5. From gut to gray matter: a case report of posterior reversible encephalopathy syndrome in a pediatric patient with celiac disease

    Salar H, Anns KM, Salar M, Khan F, Aman M, Zafar U, Ahmad I, Basharat S, Murad R, Salar K, Anwar SSM

    Clinical Case Reports. 2025;13(3):e70260

    Case reportFirst authorCited by 2
  6. Glucocorticoids for pain flare prophylaxis after palliative radiotherapy for bone metastases: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials

    Salar M*, Salar H*, Ali SMF, Qureshi A, Jamil MA, Waseem S, Jehanzeb H, Mahmud O, Saleem A, Waqar MA

    * Joint first authors

    BMJ Supportive & Palliative Care. Published online 1 October 2025

    Across four trials and 765 patients, glucocorticoids reduced pain flare after palliative radiotherapy (RR 0.59, 95% CI 0.35 to 0.98).

    Systematic review and meta-analysisJoint first authorPoster of Distinction, ISRC 2024Cited by 2
  7. Making minimally invasive procedures more sustainable: a systematic review comparing the environmental footprint of single-use versus multi-use instruments

    Martins RS, Salar H, Salar M, Luo J, Poulikidis K, Razi SS, Latif MJ, Tafuri K, Bhora FY

    World Journal of Surgery. 2024;48(9):2212–2223

    Presented at the American College of Surgeons Clinical Congress 2024.

    Every high-quality life-cycle analysis among 13 studies found a smaller environmental footprint for multi-use instruments.

    Systematic reviewCited by 11

National Science Bowl Pakistan

A free, buzzer-based science competition for school students, run with the Centre for Economic Research in Pakistan. I captained a winning team at one of its first pilots, have co-led it since 2021, and co-designed its offline competition app with CERP Labs.

With Professor Asim Ijaz Khwaja of Harvard Kennedy School, we are now testing whether competing changes students’ engagement, performance and career aspirations, in a randomised trial across 185 schools of The Citizens Foundation.

The programme and the trial
Role
Co-President since November 2021
Reach
More than 5,000 students in 1,000 teams from over 100 institutions; 42% girls
Evaluation
School-level randomised trial, 185 schools
Funding
The Agency Fund, Global Math Talent Grant, US$183,796

Contact

hashim.salar@scholar.aku.edu

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