History of Pediatric Surgery in Iran:

Pediatric surgery in Iran is approximately dates back to forty years ago and in order to write down such record, it may be categorized into three eras: prior to 1971, the 70’s and after that. Prior to 1971, pediatric surgery was not officially existed and children who were suffering from congenital and acquired diseases were usually operated by adult surgeons at the general surgery wards. The 70’s is considered as the golden era of the emergence and growth of pediatric surgery, when for the first time some Iranian physicians, who were educated in the field of general and pediatric surgery in the West, returned to Iran and first of all started performing pediatric surgeries at the general surgery wards in Tehran and some other cities and then those surgeons established independent pediatric surgery wards. Those surgeons included: Dr. Valiollah Mehrabi, Dr. Manouchehr Amirfeyz, Dr. Keyvan Rafieian, Dr. Abbas Khalesi, Dr. Mohammad Hossein Kheradpir, Dr. Piramoun Moghaddam, Dr. Kaviani, Dr. Farrokh Mehdinejad, Dr. Karim Vaezzadeh, Dr. Sirous Gerami, Dr. Firouzeh Gharabiglou, Dr. Manouchehr Davaei, and Dr. Ali Sepehri.
Before the victory of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, the pediatric surgical wards in Tehran and centers of the provinces were focused on treating children suffered from diseases and educating medical students and assistants, but these wards were still not been admitted as separated pediatric surgical wards. However, in 1980, thanking to the efforts made by Dr. Valiollah Mehrabi, the Ministry of Science at that time accepted that pediatric surgery is a subspecialty program and a new group of surgeons shall be educated for this program. Based on such agreement, as of 1980 Bahrami, Taleghani and Children Medical Center hospitals started choosing pediatric surgery subspecialty assistants from amongst the volunteered general surgeons, in a way that the first graduate in this field managed to obtain his subspecialty degree in 1982. Since then, many young surgeons focused on pediatric surgery, so that after the 70’s and in the beginning of the 80’s and thereafter, pediatric surgery has developed and the surgical wards of Amir Kabir, Bahrami, Taleghani, Mofid, Children Medical Center, Hazrat Ali Asghar, Shiraz, Esfahan hospitals started choosing assistants and later on, dispatched their graduates to different universities to open new pediatric surgery wards. Now (i.e. 2009), some 80 pediatric surgeons are rendering their services in different cities of Iran. In 1993, Dr. Manouchehr Amirfeyz, obtained the license to establish the Society of Pediatric Surgeons by taking benefit from assistance of Dr. Khalesi, Dr. Vaezzadeh and Dr. Javad Ahmadi and the Society commenced its scientific activities in the same year, in a way that it uninterruptedly holds annual congress and monthly conferences enjoying the assistance of pediatric surgeons. Meanwhile, The Iranian Society of Pediatric Surgeons has been granted membership in the Society of Asian Pediatric Surgeons and World Federation of Association of Pediatric Surgeons.
Besides treatment activities, Iranian pediatric surgery has progressed in the field of research to a desirable level.