Surgeon

Dr. Ernesto Molfino, a general surgeon, died of a heart attack Sunday while playing soccer with a recreation league team at Schooley Mill Park in Highland. The Ellicott City resident was 64. Born in Lima, Peru, where he received his medical education, he moved to the United States and did his surgical residency in Detroit. He then moved to Baltimore and practiced at the old Lutheran Hospital in West Baltimore. He also did a shock trauma fellowship with Dr. R. Adams Cowley at University of Maryland Medical Center.

"Deep discounting," "special introductory offer" and "convenient mall location" -- strategies long used to entice American consumers -- are now being employed to sell something customarily discussed in the hushed tones of doctors' offices: eye surgery.Laser vision correction, however, is not ordinary eye surgery. It's an elective procedure, seldom covered by insurance. Thus surgeons have turned to the selling points of the retail world -- price and easy access -- to persuade consumers to spring for it."

Dr. Gerard-Marie McGuffie Woel, a bow-tied surgeon who left his native Haiti for Baltimore and fathered a family full of doctors, died Thursday at Sinai Hospital after a short battle with cancer. He was 66.From 1960 to 1966, Dr. Woel worked at Sinai, where he was chief resident in the emergency room, before entering private practice in Northwest Baltimore. He worked from his Rogers Avenue office for 31 years, until his retirement in February 1997.A general surgeon, Dr. Woel specialized in biliary tract and pancreatic operations, but he was best-known for cheering patients with his bow ties and flowers from his wife's garden.

After an operation on his back at a Cleveland hospital yesterday, Cal Ripken stands a reasonable chance of returning to the field next spring, experts say. But the outlook is far from certain."

BOSTON -- A twist of the wrist by two surgeons helped give a new look to the formerly sunken chest of 13-year-old Patrick Delaney in a demonstration of minimally invasive surgery last week.The Massachusetts General Hospital surgeons had inserted a bowed metal bar from one side of Patrick's chest to the other, through small incisions under each arm.Then, as if turning a crank, the doctors rotated the rod so that its arched shape pointed upward, pushing the boy's concave chest wall outward and giving it a normal contour.

Dr. Adam Francis Patrick Szczypinski Sr., a retired Baltimore surgeon who was known for his meticulousness in the operating room and concern for the welfare of his patients, died of leukemia Sunday at Gilchrist Center for Hospice Care. The Timonium resident was 68.Until retiring in April, Dr. Szczypinski, whose sub-specialty was vascular surgery, had practiced medicine more than 40 years and had an office in the 1400 block of E. Joppa Road in Towson.He also served on the staff of Union Memorial Hospital, Greater Baltimore Medical Center, Franklin Square Hospital Center, Mercy Medical Center, St. Joseph Medical Center and Good Samaritan Hospital.

Dr. Robert F. Healy, a retired Baltimore general surgeon who for more than 40 years had offices downtown and in Southwest Baltimore, died Thursday of heart failure at his home, the Foxhall estate in Catonsville. He was 89.Dr. Healy was an attending surgeon at St. Agnes Hospital from 1937 to 1982 and had offices in the Medical Arts Building in Mount Vernon downtown and later on Wilkens Avenue near the hospital."He had the perfect demeanor for a surgeon, very low-key and easygoing," said Raymond Kendall, who knew Dr. Healy for about 25 years.

Dr. Michael Ain stands 4 feet 3. It's the first thing you notice. There's no way around it. He rolls his green surgical pants around the ankles. He climbs a step-stool to reach the operating table. Even then, his colleagues stand a foot or so above him.He's an orthopedic surgeon, a specialty usually reserved for the jocks of medicine. Ain doesn't exactly fit the stereotype, but he did wrestle in high school, and now he golfs on weekends and fixes bones with big power tools that could tear down walls.

The state Court of Special Appeals reversed yesterday an Anne Arundel County circuit judge's decision to suppress evidence -- a plastic bag of drugs -- dropped by a passenger fleeing from a car Annapolis police had stopped for speeding.The decision means that the trial of Leon Surgeon, charged with two counts of possession and possession with the intent to distribute drugs, will proceed. Court records did not indicate what drugs.Surgeon had claimed at a hearing on the evidence that seizure of the drugs violated his Fourth Amendment rights.

A Baltimore County jury awarded more than $450,000 yesterday to a retired construction superintendent and his wife who claimed in a malpractice suit that a surgeon's negligence had destroyed the man's testicles.Alvin R. Snyder, 76, of Upperco has suffered symptoms similar to menopause since undergoing hernia operations in 1992 and 1993. His lawyer, Marvin Ellin, said a loss of blood flow left the testicles "dead" -- and caused Snyder to experience "hot flashes" and depression.During a four-day Circuit Court trial, Ellin and co-counsel LaVonna L. Vice presented testimony to show that Snyder lost the function of one testicle as a result of the 1992 operation, but that the loss was not apparent until the other was affected in the 1993 operation.

Ernest Owen Brown, a retired Baltimore surgeon who was one of the early African-American graduates of the University of Maryland School of Medicine, died of heart failure June 8 at Seasons Hospice at Northwest Hospital Center. He was 81. Born in Baltimore, one of 11 children of a longshoreman, Dr. Brown settled in Severna Park with his family. In an unpublished biographical sketch, Dr. Brown wrote that the first school he attended was Pumphrey Elementary School. "It was a two-room clapboard and shaker shingle structure with outdoor privies."

Dr. Mojtaba Gashti, the Baltimore surgeon who brought a Haitian boy to the U.S. to remove an enormous tumor that might have otherwise killed him, has been named 2009 Public Citizen of the Year by the Maryland Chapter of the National Association of Social Workers. Gashti, chief of vascular surgery at Union Memorial Hospital, was honored by the group for his humanitarian missions to Haiti, an annual medical pilgrimage he has made to the impoverished country since 1994. In February, Gashti brought 13-year-old Osly St. Preux and his mother to Baltimore, put them up at his Ellicott City home and arranged for the boy's surgeries.

Osly St. Preux and his mother hopped on the back of a truck and rode for hours along rutted roads in northern Haiti before they finally arrived, barefoot, at the hospital run by nuns and often staffed by American volunteers. When Osly, then 12, took off his shirt for a surgeon from Baltimore, the doctor couldn't believe what he was seeing. The tumor growing out of Osly's right armpit was enormous, a gnarled, bulbous mass larger than a grapefruit and getting bigger by the month. Dr. Mojtaba Gashti knew almost immediately that he and his team, who every spring make a pilgrimage to Haiti to perform surgery, would not be able to save Osly - not there, in fairly primitive conditions in one of the poorest places on the planet.

The doctors of ABC's Hopkins might look and sound like the characters on Grey's Anatomy, but they really are among the best in their fields. And they represent the changing face of American medicine with more women and top specialists from other countries. Dr. Alfredo Quinones-Hinojosa says he never could have "dreamed" 20 years ago when he entered the United States illegally as a migrant worker that one day he would be doing brain surgery at Hopkins. "I was born in a small little border town between the United States and Mexico, and all I wanted to do when I came to the United States was make a little money and send it home to my family so that we could actually put food on the table."

Dr. Ernesto Molfino, a general surgeon, died of a heart attack Sunday while playing soccer with a recreation league team at Schooley Mill Park in Highland. The Ellicott City resident was 64. Born in Lima, Peru, where he received his medical education, he moved to the United States and did his surgical residency in Detroit. He then moved to Baltimore and practiced at the old Lutheran Hospital in West Baltimore. He also did a shock trauma fellowship with Dr. R. Adams Cowley at University of Maryland Medical Center.

ERNESTO MOLFINO M.D., 64 Retired General Surgeon, Avid Rec League Soccer Player Ernesto Molfino M.D. died Sunday of a heart attack while playing soccer, his favorite pastime and lifelong passion. Born in Lima, Peru, he came to the U.S. to become a surgeon and practiced in Baltimore for 31 years. Loved and respected by many, he selflessly dedicated his life to others. A celebration of his life will be held on Saturday June 23, 2007 from 10 am - 1 pm in the Tiffany Room at Turf Valley Country Club, 2700 Turf Valley Rd , Ellicott City, MD 21042.

KENNETT SQUARE, Pa. -- Among zookeepers, farmers and the horse set, the University of Pennsylvania's George D. Widener Hospital for Large Animals is renowned. But it took Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro to make the institution - and the veterinary surgeon chiefly overseeing the horse's recovery from a devastating Preakness Stakes leg injury - the center of attention. "Horses elicit a pretty deep, visceral response for a whole lot of people because of their strength, elegance and power," says Dr. Dean Richardson, the talkative and personable surgeon who - if all continues to go well - might become known as the vet who saved Barbaro.

If you're a lousy surgeon, you'll be a lousy robotic surgeon." LI-MING SU, director of laparoscopic and robotic urological surgery at the Johns Hopkins Medical Center

Jan. 18 1913: The first sedan-type automobile, a Hudson, went on display at the 13th Automobile Show in New York. 1964: U.S. Surgeon General Luther Terry issued the first government report saying smoking may be hazardous to one's health.

Dr. Harold Sussman, a retired Baltimore surgeon whose career at Sinai Hospital spanned nearly a half-century, died from stroke complications there Tuesday. The Pikesville resident was 81. Dr. Sussman was born in Baltimore and raised on Bryant Avenue. He was the son of Jacob Sussman, co-owner with Carl Lev of Sussman and Lev's Delicatessen in the 900 block of E. Baltimore St., and he worked in the business during his high school and undergraduate years. "While working there, he learned how to be a surgeon while cutting up turkeys and putting them back together again," said a daughter, Amy S. Scherr of Mount Washington.