Doctors honored for their volunteer work

Surgeons do knee, hip replacements

Orthopedic surgeon Michael W. Weiss has a busy practice in the North Hills, but he says the best week of his professional life comes every year when he goes to underdevelopedcountries in Latin America to perform free hip and knee replacements.

Dr. Weiss and surgeon Anthony DiGioia are comedical directors of Operation Walk Pittsburgh, a nonprofit that has provided more than 400 joint-replacement surgeries since 2009 in Guatemala, Cuba, Panama and Honduras.

For their work, the doctors will receive the Allegheny County Medical Society Foundation Physician Volunteer Award. The ceremony is scheduled for 6 p.m. Saturday at the UPMC Club at Heinz Field. The pair will be among several notable Pittsburgh doctors and individuals recognized for their time and talents devoted to charitable, clinical and educational services.

Dr. Weiss, who lives in Wexford and graduated from Rutgers Medical School, is a founding member of Tri Rivers Musculoskeletal Centers in McCandless.

“For one who does not have access to our level of medical care, this is a gamechanger, [patients] go back to a normal life, “Dr. Weiss said of Operation Walk’s work.

Operation Walk was started in Los Angeles and has 17 chapters that provide free joint-replacement surgeries across the world. Dr. DiGioia founded Pittsburgh’s team in 2008. This group focuses on Latin America and volunteers plans to visit Antigua, Guatemala, for the fourth time this August.

About 60 volunteers, including surgeons, physical therapists, nurses and other health-care professionals, attend these week-long trips. While there, they typically do more than 60 hip and knee replacements.

Dr. DiGioia, a graduate of Harvard Medical School and a resident of Shadyside, is medical director of the Bone and Joint Center at Magee Womens Hospital of UPMC.

Many of the patients view the surgery “as almost like winning the lottery,” Dr. DiGioia said, because they have poor access to such lifealteringprocedures and often live in areas where walking isthe only way to get around.

“They don’t have cars; they don’t have motorcycles. They have to walk,” Dr. DiGioia noted. But “when you can’t walk, you can’t participate in society.”

Dr. Weiss remembers a Honduran patient in his 20s who fractured his hip in a motorcycle accident. The man could barely walk but worked at an airport baggage department.

Such a patient would have had immediate surgery in the U.S., but he had to wait for years in Honduras, Dr. Weiss said.

“We give people back the ability to get on with their lives so they can take care of their family and loved ones,” he said.

Though the trips are rewarding, they also are grueling the doctors say. Volunteers spend a couple days setting up at a host facility, meeting with patients, and determining surgery schedules. Then for the next several days, they operate, starting early in the morning and ending late at night.

Volunteers assist patients with initial recovery and train local medical professionals on follow-up care.

The volunteers also do a non-medical service project, such as painting an orphanage, during their stay.

Angela DeVanney, who is a team leader for Operation Walk Pittsburgh, oversees much of the logistics and fundraising for the effort. She is the daughter of Dr. DiGioia and has been on several trips with the team.

“One of the things that every single person that has been involved in any trip will say is you really truly feel like you’re giving these patients a new life,” Ms. DeVanney said. “Most of us can’t imagine what it’s like to live in pain every day. For a lot of these people who are young, when you put yourself in their shoes, you just think of how lucky you are to be given everything that you’ve been given. They give back to us just as much as we give back to them.”

Prior to the trip, the volunteers must raise funds. Team leaders, including doctors Weiss and DiGioia, figure out the proper equipment to take and the logistics for getting it shipped to a different country.

But the traveling medical men say the effort is worth it.

“It returns us back to the basics of why we got into medicine, which is taking care of patients and their families,” Dr. DiGioia said.