Syracuse surgeon, Dr. Samuel Badalian

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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."

 

 

http://blog.syracuse.com/cny/2012/01/syracuse_surgeon_dr_samuel_badalian_trains_doctors_and_helps_patients_here_and_abroad.html