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[Yervant1]

Syracuse.com , NY
Jan 3 2012


Syracuse surgeon, Dr. Samuel Badalian, trains doctors and helps
patients here and abroad

Published: Tuesday, January 03, 2012, 2:00 AM
By Kathleen Poliquin / The Post-Standard

Dr. Samuel Badalian's heart sinks when he sees surgical supplies going
unused and being discarded in the operating room at St. Joseph's
hospital, where he is chairman of Obstetrics and Gynecology. His heart
sinks, not because he is worried about cutting costs in his
department, but because he knows first hand how rare and precious
those supplies are in countries such as Armenia and Kazakhstan.

Badalian visited Kazakhstan in July, and Russia and Armenia, where he
was born, in October, to perform urogynecological surgeries and to
teach doctors there surgical techniques -- something he has been doing
for almost seven years. And he plans to keep going back.

Besides his leadership position at St. Joseph's, and his duties as
clinical professor at SUNY Upstate Medical University, the Manlius
doctor has a bustling private practice and a full calendar of about
170 surgical cases here each year. But his advanced urogynecological
surgical skills, coupled with his fluency in Armenian, Russian, French
and English, put him in high demand abroad, where wait-listed surgical
patients eagerly anticipate his return and doctors strive to learn and
replicate his techniques.

Many of the patients Badalian treats overseas suffer from unrelenting
pain and incontinence. Typically, the women have a condition called
prolapse, which results when the muscles and ligaments supporting
their pelvic organs weaken due to age, heredity or complications of
childbirth, causing the organs to slip out of place. Many have already
had up to three ineffective surgeries that have left them scarred,
deformed and desperate. Their doctors, absent proper training, may
have tried to approximate surgical techniques they watched on Internet
videos. And because of a shortage of proper surgical devices and
supplies, it's not unheard of for doctors to cobble together hand-made
devices from non-sterile materials or to reuse single-use instruments
many times.

While he uses his own resources to fund his overseas travel, Badalian
asked for and received donations of surgical kits, which cost $1,000
to $1,500 each -- some with imminent expiration dates -- from American
medical and surgical supply companies.

Badalian can only do a limited number of surgeries during his
jam-packed visits, but he also instructs and lectures as much as he
can, sometimes with surgeons from other countries. On a typical day,
he would perform surgeries on patients in an auditorium from 8 a.m. to
5 p.m. before nearly 300 physicians, speaking into a microphone while
a camera filmed over his shoulder. From 5 to 7 p.m., he would give
lectures, then eat and go to his room.

"Even physicians from other countries are watching," Badalian said.
"They're watching me, I'm watching them. I'm learning from them,
they're learning from me. That's an exchange of experience also. It
gives me energy."

Badalian has seen progress in Russia since he first traveled there six
years ago. American surgical supply companies now have sales reps
there and some physicians in the larger cities are able to perform the
intricate surgeries.

Regarding the week he spent in July in Kazakhstan, Badalian said, "I
was with another physician from Israel. It is a Muslim country and
there I am from the U.S. and he is there from Israel, and both of us
were teaching them how to do surgeries. They were very happy and very
excited. They plan to call us back. They have everything -- gas, oil,
a lot of money, but they don't know how to do these complicated
cases."

Badalian said he hopes to travel to Ghana in the spring to do
surgeries and to teach there. He would also like to take more
physicians with him when he returns to Armenia next fall.

"When you go and see what's going on in those places, you truly
appreciate when you come back," Badalian said. "Your work ethic
changes, you are becoming a different doctor. You are working
differently, you are helping people differently. You really appreciate
your place, your hospital, your work. You are treating your patients
and your colleagues much better than if you don't know what is going
on behind you. Plus, you are giving them your knowledge. When you are
teaching other physicians, it makes you a better physician, much
significantly better. And with this, we will try to make a
difference."


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