Internationally renowned knee surgeon Dr Dinesh Patel, chief of arthroscopic surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital and associate clinical professor of orthopedic surgery at Harvard Medical School, will be honoured on June 14 with the unveiling of an Arthroscopic Learning Laboratory at MGH named after him.
Patel, who has operated on the likes of former Indian captain Kapil Dev and baseball legend Ted Williams, has taught and trained arthroscopic surgery worldwide. He has been recognised and honoured by professional organisations in the US and abroad, including in his birthplace Ahmedabad, where he helped set up Asia's largest orthopedic center. Patel has also received the prestigious Gujarat Garima Award and the Vishwa Gurjari Award.
Patel told rediff.com that "I am deeply honoured and humbled by this gesture," and thanked in particular Dr Hary Rubash, chief of the department of orthopedics at MGH, Thomas Gill, chief of sports medicine service, MGH, and former chief of arthroscopic surgery at MGH Bertram Zarins, "who all worked tirelessly to make this teaching and training lab a reality and insisted that it be named after me."
He said that earlier "they wanted to name an endowed professorship in my name at Harvard, but it requires a lot of money -- $ 4 to $5 million, and then recently, they decided to establish this lab in my name. It is indeed such an honour and I am so grateful to them."
Patel added, "They wouldn't take no for an answer and wanted this lab named after me for all the contributions I had made in this field, which goes back to 1974. Also, for the sustained role I have played in not only promoting this technology here but also globally, including in India, where we established the first lab of its kind in Asia in 2001 in Ahmedabad, where I was able to get an American company to donate $300,000 towards it and (Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra) Modi provided the building and Advani also gave his fullest support."
He said that since the establishment of this centre in Ahmedabad, which he visits regularly, sometimes twice a year, "we have trained 800 orthopedic surgeons so far and it is still the biggest arthroscopy laboratory in Asia."
Patel explained that that the Dinesh G Patel, MD, Arthroscopy Learning Laboratory, which would be a joint MGH and Harvard training and teaching centre, "we will have dry models -- knee models, shoulder models, elbow models, ankle models -- and simulation machines for training and teaching. And, the main objective will be to teach and train orthopedic surgeons, residents, fellows, medical students, nurses, in all of the facets of arthroscopy surgery and in hand/eye coordination."
"The idea is for them to go from there and specialize in different disciplines," he said, and added, "The lab will also help show ways to reduce technical errors and also how to lower healthcare costs through these methods."
Besides being a founding member of the American Association of Arthroscopic Surgeons, Patel has been a member of the Harvard Medical School Admissions Committee, a member of the Massachusetts Board of Medicine, and since 2003, first Commissioner and then consultant on the National Committee on Foreign Medical Education and Accreditation.
Among the several awards he has received is an award given by former Governor William Weld as 'One of the Best New Immigrants in Massachusetts,' and he also figured in the US News & World Report's highly acclaimed Best Doctors List in February 2002.
He has regularly been voted by his peers in Boston Magazine as one of the top doctors nationally in the field of arthroscopic surgery.
Patel has also been chairman of the board of registration in medicine in Massachusetts, which overseas licensure and discipline of physicians, and he has served as a board member and member of the executive committee of the Federal of State Medical Boards, the apex body of all state boards in the US. In April 2003, he was presented with the FSMB Leadership Award for his years of service.
He is also the founder of a non-governmental organisation called A Leg to Stand On, which assists children who need artificial limbs. He was earlier Commissioner of Catastrophic Illness for Children's Relief Fund in Massachusetts and in October 2005, was appointed chairman of the Dubai Health Care City Board of Licensure.
Currently, he is a member of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Credential Committee and a member of the Massachusetts State Dispute Resolution Committee.
Patel is also a longtime community and political activist and was among the founders of the Indian American Forum for Political Education -- the oldest Indian American political organisation conceived by Dr Joy Cherian -- and also a stalwart of the American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin.
