California Society of Anesthesiologists Bulletin Spring/Summer 2014 - (Page 36)
OUR STORIES
The First Liver
Transplants in Iraq
By Barry M. Rose, MD
M
edical mission
reports do not
usually begin with
the story of a soldier's
harrowing escape from
a country at war, but
this one proudly does.
A young Dr. Assad
Hassoun, native of
Babylon, Iraq, escaped
his homeland during Saddam Hussein's war with
Iran, bombs exploding around him, lives mangled
and maimed along his route to freedom. In an
ultimate ironic twist, Assad was forced to escape
to Iran, the country with which his country was at
war, as he feared the Turks were sympathetic to the
Sunni dictator Hussein and would force him back
to Iraq upon discovering his presence in Turkey.
He left behind a family subjected to interrogation,
imprisonment, and torture by the Hussein regime's
hunger to exact a price for their son and brother's
disappearance. And so began Assad's long and
dramatic journey, first to Europe and then to
the United States, where he eventually became a
transplant surgeon.
I was fortunate to be a part of a teaching mission to
Iraq, led by CSA Past President Dr. Thomas Cromwell
and sponsored by the U.S. Department of State. The
purpose of the groundbreaking program, administered
by the International Medical Corps, was to reestablish
continuing education for Iraqi anesthesiologists, which
had been absent for over 20 years. My three colleagues
and I lectured in Erbil, in the Kurdistan region, and in
Baghdad during that trip. Thus began my relationship
with Iraqi physicians and the Iraqi medical system.
After the downfall of the Hussein regime, Assad
returned to his homeland to visit his family several
times and, during those visits, eventually began
performing surgery at the request of his Iraqi
colleagues. Around the same time, in October 2008,
There was little in the way of hope for the large majority
of these patients and their families, the quotidian
essence of their lives being suffering and fear. As a sad
example, during one of our early transplant missions,
two young brothers with untreated Wilson's disease and
36 | CSA Bulletin
The Challenges in Iraq
In general, Iraqi Muslim tenets and custom forbid the
use of cadaver organs for transplantation, so solid organ
transplants in Iraq are exclusively of the "living donor"
variety. And as far as we could determine, living-donor
liver transplantation, arguably the most demanding,
difficult, and resource-intensive of all human surgeries
for a variety of reasons, had not been performed in Iraq.
Instead, the options for Iraqi end-stage liver disease
(ESLD) patients were either 1) buy their way to India or
Turkey for transplantation (estimated to cost $60,000-
$120,000, with variable outcomes and follow-up, and
assuredly only a realistic financial option for very few),
or 2) death.
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of California Society of Anesthesiologists Bulletin Spring/Summer 2014
Editor's Notes
President's Page
Peering Over the Ether Screen
The Dark Side of Quality Reilluminated and Reimagined
The Perioperative Use of Beta Blockers
ASA Director's Report
Physician Well-Being
Upcoming CSA Anesthesia Seminars
Our Stories
From the Executive Director
Our Stories
Practice Alert
On Your Behalf: Legislative and Practice Affairs
CSA Political Alert
Taking the CSA Grassroots and GASPAC Program from 'Good' to 'Great'
CSA Winter Anesthesia Seminar 2014: Midwinter Educational Interlude
California and National News
News from the Districts
California Society of Anesthesiologists Bulletin Spring/Summer 2014
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