 In the course of his career, Hughes authored or co-authored 6 text books and wrote or co-wrote over 300 papers, many of which were published in leading peer-reviewed journals such as the Medical Journal of Australia, the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Surgery, the Lancet and the British Medical Journal.Hughes had an intense interest in advancing the surgical skills of practitioners in South East Asia.He organised a series of medical teams from the Royal Melbourne Hospital to visit Vietnam in 1964, followed by a team from St Vincent's Hospital, Melbourne in 1965 and teams from Prince Henry's Hospital and the Alfred Hospital in 1966.