UNIVERSITY OF SANTO TOMAS Medical Alumni Association in America
 
 
 
 

NEWS from USTMAAA and FOUNDATION

Here are the stories and current events in the world of the USTMAAA and Foundation. You are welcome to contribute by submitting your article to the publisher: ustmaaa@ustmaaamerica.com. The USTMAAA editorial board reserves the right to edit or refuse posting your article depending on its content.
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  • 10 May 2019 9:55 AM | Eduardo Cabigao (Administrator)



    JEFFERSON AWARDS NIGHT 2019 PDF FILE.pdf


    SPEECH JEFFERSON AWARD.docx


    Please click on the files above for Dr. Basilio's most recent accolade and accomplishment.  Thanks you.

  • 10 Oct 2017 12:33 PM | Primo Andres (Administrator)

    The ranking of the best medical schools in the Philippines for 2017 has been released, which currently features 25 of the 52 colleges and universities offering medicine programs.

    University of Santo Tomas landed as the top medical school in 2017 with 96.11 percent. University of the East Ramon Magsaysay Memorial Medical Center followed with 95.49 percent while University of the Philippines-Manila ranked third with 85.52 pecent. These universities are currently Centers of Excellence for Medicine as declared by the Commission on Higher Education (CHED).



  • 06 Oct 2017 10:31 AM | Primo Andres (Administrator)
    To the right of Trump is John Fildes, M.D., FACS, Chairman, Dept. of Surgery, Univ.of Nevada, School of Medicine, Medical Director and Chairman of Acute Trauma and Burns, Univ. Medical Center (UMC) Las Vegas, NV
    UST MED. SCH CLASS '82

    Residency at Bronx Lebanon Med. Ctr where the late Federico Cruz, M.D., FACS UST Class '57, was his attending surgeon for a few months before Cruz left for California

    Fellowship at Cook County Hospital in Chicago when Hernan Reyes, M.D. UST Class'57 was Chairman of the Dept. of Surgery.


  • 22 Sep 2017 4:37 PM | Primo Andres (Administrator)

    Central Pa. 'miracle' doctor retiring after celebrated career

    By David Wenner

    dwenner@pennlive.com



    In this Sept. 1, 2017 photo, Dr. Domingo Alvear holds an item he gives to children he cares for in Third World counties.(David Wenner/PennLive)


    Dr. Domingo Alvear specialized in rare, difficult operations on babies and children.

    He did things like use a piece of colon to give a normal life to a little girl whose esophagus wasn't connected at either end. He heard words like "miracle" from relieved, grateful parents.

    Yet even with such impact close to home, Alvear established a dual career delivering surgical care to some of the poorest, most dangerous parts of the world. He commonly helped people whose conditions not only disabled them but made them social outcasts, such as people whose intestines exited through their abdomen and who lacked colostomy bags and means of keeping the opening clean.

    Now, one of the great medical careers of the Harrisburg region, and perhaps anywhere, is winding down.

    Dr. Domingo Alvear risks getting 'hurt' to offer normal lives

    Alvear, 74, stopped performing pediatric surgeries in 2016 following a major stroke suffered during a medical mission in the Philippines. He remains involved in medical missions run through the organization he founded, World Surgical Missions. Last week he was preparing for separate missions to some of the world's most dangerous spots later this year.

    But beyond that, only one major medical task remains -- finding a younger but similarly committed doctor to carry on the mission work. As always, Alvear is confident.

    But finding someone just like him might be harder than he thinks.

    Alvear was raised in the Philippines, where his uncle was the town doctor. Tagging along, Alvear was moved by interactions between his uncle and patients, including many who were poor and dying. He also had a sister born prematurely. While some in his family shied away from the 3-pound infant, Alvear fed her with an eye dropper.

    By third grade he knew what he wanted to do with his life.

    After medical school in the Philippines, Alvear came to United States for almost a decade of the residencies and fellowships needed to become a pediatric surgeon. This was the late 1960s and early 1970s. Alvear wound up at Presbyterian University of Pennsylvania Medical Center in Philadelphia, where he latched on to a doctor he recognized as a "master surgeon."

    "When you watched him it was like watching a symphony," Alvear said. "I was very lucky to find that guy." 


    Eventually, his hospital received a baby that needed a delicate operation. The doctors decided to send the baby to the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. There, the chief surgeon was Dr. C. Everett Koop, who later became the U.S. Surgeon General. Alvear "scrubbed in" and watched as Koop explained the operation. Alvear left with a "fascination" with the emerging field of pediatric surgery, and its potential to give normal life to young patients who in the past would have faced disability or death.

    He expected to return to the Philippines, but his plans changed as a result of the dictatorship of President Ferdinand Marcos.

    Instead, Alvear began a career in Harrisburg in 1973. It was the dawn of pediatric surgery. Before that, surgeries on babies and children were done by regular surgeons. One of Alvear's early tasks was to convince other doctors that "a baby is not a small adult."

    In those days, specialized pediatric was mainly concentrated in a few major cities such as Boston and Philadelphia. In Harrisburg, when Alvear operated on a baby or child, he would continue caring for them throughout their hospital stay and beyond. Eventually, he helped establish neonatal intensive care units at Harrisburg Hospital and the former Polyclinic Hospital.

    For years, Alvear did surgeries at all the Harrisburg area hospitals and in Lancaster, although he later became known for his association with PinnacleHealth System. He estimates he performed 10,000 surgeries over the years, operating on all parts of the body except the brain, heart and skeleton.

    He removed appendixes, fixed cleft palates and cared for babies born prematurely, including one who weighed only 14 ounces and grew up healthy. He fixed various other birth defects and specialized in ailments and operations involving the esophagus and intestines. He invented one such procedure, wrote about it, and in turn was sought out by families from other states and Canada.

    Alvear was among the first doctors to carry out a surgery where a malformed esophagus is replaced with a section of intestine to cure a rare condition.

    Erin Roberts of Waynesboro handed her tiny daughter, Aiden, to Alvear when Aiden was a few weeks old. She was filled with worry. Aiden had been born with an undeveloped esophagus, the tube that connects the throat to the stomach. Hers wasn't connected at either end.

    Alvear had read about cases where the baby is nourished intravenously and the esophagus fixes itself. But it didn't work with Aiden. So Alvear used a piece of her colon to fix her esophagus. She was eight weeks old. Now she's 14, a skilled gymnast and an honor student, according to her mom.

    "He gave her what she is today," Erin Roberts said. "I don't get how he does it. They are such tiny little kids. It still amazes me."

    She also remembers how Alvear somehow managed to calm her even before the surgery. "He is a very, very skilled man with a big heart," she said.

    Some of his cases were so extreme or touching there were stories in the newspaper.

    In the early 1990s, for example, Alvear and a colleague performed several surgeries on a young girl born with a condition that results in a lack of nerve cells in her intestine, preventing from eating moving her bowels normally. Her family were Old Order Mennonites who relied on their church to pay their medical bills. The expense was more than the church could pay, so Alvear help create a trust fund to collect donations.

    For his part, Alvear talks more about medical circumstances than any sort of heroics. During a 90-minute conversation, he occasionally mentions things like attending the high school graduation of a former patient, or the time a former patient in her 40s showed up at his front door to thank him. More often, he talks excitedly about patients he never heard from again -- because everything was OK. Or the anxiety he felt, and all the medical literature he pored over, when faced with a child whose condition had no well-established cure. "I like challenges," he said.

    Deep into his career, in 1997, Alvear found his second calling. He established the organization now known as the World Surgical Foundation, which organizes medical missions to Third World countries including Haiti, Honduras and Ethiopia. In the beginning, Alvear did much of the organizing, finding volunteer doctors and nurses, and asking for donations of supplies and equipment.

    "I had to beg and have a very thick skin," he says.

    Alvear estimates he and follow World Surgical Foundation volunteers have performed about 9,000 operations. The foundation also leaves behind machines and medical equipment, and trains local doctors to better care for their patients. It now has a warehouse of medical equipment and supplies. 

    He hopes to soon hand his leadership role over to a younger doctor and said the possibilities include several surgeons with national reputations.

    For the short-term, things haven't changed that much. Alvear said he is almost fully recovered from the stroke that struck in early 2016, which at first paralyzed all four limbs and left him unable to speak. He still has a bit of weakness on his right side, but no longer needs a cane, he said.

    Last week, a box of medications for use on an upcoming mission arrived at his home at the end of a long, curving driveway near Mechanicsburg. Alvear sat at a dining room table covered with paperwork related to medical missions. He was preparing for medical missions in Honduras in September and Nigeria in November. He was undaunted by the fact that Honduras, with 8.5 million people, is known as the "murder capital of the world."

    More than anything, Alvear talks about people in desperate need. He talks about facing 150 people in need of operations when there was time for only 16. He talks about the people in Third World countries suffering from the crude colostomies that make them outcasts. He talks about how their lives could be normal if only they had access to operations U.S. surgeons perform routinely. He talks about the need to make more people aware, and to want to help.


  • 28 Jul 2017 11:29 AM | Primo Andres (Administrator)


    The 25th USTMAAA Grand Reunion and Medical Convention in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada at the Sheraton Wall Centre on July 1-5, 2017 went relatively well. The Excursions to Victoria City and the Butchart Gardens and the Tour of the Canadian Rockies aboard the luxury train, Rocky Mountaineer, were very enjoyable.


    The photos and videos are now posted in the website under the "photovideo" page (USTMAAAmerica.org/photovideo) for everybody to download. They will also be posted in the USTMAAA Facebook as space becomes available in my Vimeo account.


    The above events are covered in the July issue of the eUSThomasian that you can download from the USThomasian page (USTMAAAmerica.org/USThomasian) of the website.


    Enjoy everybody!


    Your TEAM USTMAAA

    Primo Andres, MD

    Convention Director

  • 28 Jun 2017 10:52 AM | Primo Andres (Administrator)


    Dean D.T. Maglinte, MD, FACR, FSAR, FASER (emeritus), FESGAR (Honorary), Distinguished Professor of Radiology and Imaging Sciences and Director of the Edwin Koch Visiting Professors Program is retiring at the end of June.

     

    Dr. Maglinte received his Associate in Arts (Pre Med) and medical degrees from the University of Santo Tomas, Manila, Philippines in 1965. He performed his internships at North General Hospital (Manila) and Northeastern Hospital (Philadelphia). He started his residency at Radiologisk Afdeling, Nykobing Falster, Denmark and finished at the Philadelphia General Hospital in Philadelphia in 1970. He was on the faculty of the University Pennsylvania before moving to Indianapolis in 1973.

     

    Dr. Maglinte has received numerous awards for his lifetime achievements, including the Lifetime Service award (American Board of Radiology), Lifetime Achievement Award (University of Santo Tomas Medical Alumni Association), Honorary Fellow (ESGAR), Walter Bradford Canon Medial (Society of Abdominal Radiology) and Gold Medal Award (Indiana Radiological Society). Last year, a department Endowed Professorship in Radiology Education was named after Dr. Maglinte.

     

    Dr. Maglinte has cultivated a national and international reputation for his work in gastrointestinal and abdominal radiology and his passion for education. He has served on numerous committees for the Society of Gastrointestinal Radiologists (now the Society of Abdominal Radiology), ACR, RSNA, ABR, ARRS, and ASER. He has taught countless educational courses and visiting professorships across the nation and internationally.

     

    Dr. Maglinte has left a huge impact in the field of small bowel imaging and pelvic floor dysfunction. He has contributed to popularize and refine a hybrid examination, a combined multi-slice computed tomography (CT) examination with the enteroclysis method to create a modification, CT Enteroclysis, which provides further improvements by combining the multiplanar capability of CT and the functional information afforded by fluoroscopic real time assessment. The method has also been modified to use magnetic resonance. He invented the Balloon Enteroclysis (MEC®)(Cook, Inc.), the most commonly used diagnostic enteroclysis catheter in North America, the Decompression Sump/Enteroclysis Catheter (MDEC®)(Cook, Inc.), the only combined enteric decompression and diagnostic enteroclysis catheter in North America, and the Entrobar® Barium Sulfate Suspension (Lafayette Pharmaceuticals), a 50% w/v barium suspension for biphasic diagnostic enteroclysis.

     

    His colleagues describe him as a creative, thoughtful, enthusiastic and dynamic teacher whose contributions include more than 300 presentations at national and international professional meetings, authorship and co-authorship of more than 150 original articles, 90 book chapters and review articles, and three books, including two definitive textbooks on small bowel imaging.

     

    Dr. Maglinte has been married to Eleanor McGraw for 46 years and has three children (Jennifer, Danielle and Dino) and four grandchildren. The Maglinte’s children and grandchildren live in Zionsville, Chicago and Salem, Oregon.

    Dr. Maglinte has made a lasting impact in the department as well as nationally and internationally. Dr. Maglinte retires at the end of this month. Please join us in wishing him a happy retirement and best of luck in the future!

     

    Himanshu Shah, MD, FACR, FSIR

    Chairman, Department of Radiology & Imaging Sciences

    Eugene C. Klatte Scholar in Radiology

    Associate Professor of Clinical Radiology and Imaging Sciences

     

    Jeff Dunkle, MD

    Vice Chair, Clinical Affairs

    IUHP Radiology Service Line Leader

    Department of Radiology and Imaging Sciences

    Indiana University School of Medicine

     

     

    Diana Lazzell

    Communications Coordinator Department of Radiology & Imaging Sciences

    Indiana University School of Medicine

     

    714 N. Senate Ave. Suite 100

    Indianapolis, IN  46202

    317. 278.6435 tel

    dlazzell@iupui.edu

    radiology.medicine.iu.edu

     


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