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.