Dr. Spitz Travels to China for Exchange Program

It was a great honor to have received Dr. Pang Lu, Chief of Cardiovascular Surgery at one of the largest hospitals (3,000 beds) in Beijing, China. Dr. Lu and his assistant Dr. Ye visited my office and Rush Copley Medical Center for didactic and in operating room training in minimally invasive vein treatment in January of 2009. The plan from the beginning was to prepare for the first ever national meeting in China dedicated solely to the minimally invasive treatment of vein problems at the China-Japan Friendship Hospital in June of 2009.

I was privileged to be the keynote speaker and perform live telesurgery to hundreds of surgeons at this meeting in Beijing. Dr. Ye was the adept translator and with his help we were able to relate all the advances in the treatment of vein disease. The Chinese surgeons were very eager and enthusiastic and I was surprised to see how they have advanced already in just four years since my last visit to introduce the TCI catheter for the saphenous vein, the TriVex system for varicose vein removal and the TES procedure for spider veins.

When I first developed the instruments for these procedures I was told how important the Chinese region would be because there is a large population and vein disease is very prominent and left untreated. This is very similar to our country as many doctors think that vein disease is simply a cosmetic procedure and still remembers the older treatments that were painful and not so successful. Dr. Lu stated to the media (forty media outlets and photographers came to the meeting) at the national press conference, “With modern technology that has been invented by Dr. Spitz and “exchange” programs like this we have been able to advance medicine and treatment in China to the 21st century.”

With the great success of the meeting, I will be traveling back to Shanghai, China later this year to present again as they are anxious to spread the word.