Hadassah chapter welcomes Israeli surgeon for lecture
BY DAVE BENJAMIN
Staff Writer

Dr. Adi Friedman

JACKSON - The members of Jackson's Bat Shalom chapter of Hadassah welcomed a special guest speaker from Israel to their April 19 meeting at the Bartley Healthcare facility, Bartley Road.

Hadassah is a women's organization that is committed to strengthening the unity of the Jewish people, according to the Web site hadassah.org.

Orthopedic surgeon Dr. Adi Friedman from Hadassah Hospital Ein Keriem and Mount Scopus, Jerusalem, provided the chapter members with an update on his work as well as medical advances and technology being used in Israel.

Friedman said it was an honor for him to visit the members of the Jackson Hadassah chapter.

"Without your support we couldn't do the things that we are doing at Hadassah (Hospital)," he said.

Using a PowerPoint program, Friedman gave a tour of the Hadassah units at Ein Keriem and at Mount Scopus.

"Until the 1967 war, Mount Scopus was abandoned," he said. "[Today] the hospital gives medical help to all people. It's more of a community hospital. It gives medical treatment to people from all of the neighborhoods in Jerusalem, about 600,000 patients."

He noted that within the past six months a hotel was built at the medical center which is used by the families of patients.

"All people, regardless of race or religion, are cared for there," Friedman said. "The Hadassah Ein Keriem is the No. 1 trauma center in all of Israel. Also about 30 to 50 percent of all the research that is done in Israel is done at Hadassah Hospital."

Friedman said every physician at Hadassah Hospital is also a teacher.

He then moved to a discussion of his specialty, knee surgery, and explained to the chapter members that when a doctor performs arthroscopic surgery he is not looking at the patient's knee. Instead, he is looking at a television screen.

"If you look at the knee you can't see anything because the camera is in the small hole," he explained. "There is a

digital camera that is placed inside the joint and you can move the camera all over the joint (on the inside) and see the structure. Through another hole you can repair what needs to be repaired."

Friedman said while statistics about operations and patient recovery are impressive - considering that the hospital is not like the Hospital for Special Surgery where there are a lot of sports medicine doctors - the specific cases are more important.

"We just treated someone from New Jersey. This was just one story, but we have stories like this every week," he said.

During a question and answer session one person asked the doctor if the issue of stem cell research is as controversial in Israel as it is in the United States.

Friedman said it is and said there are ethical problems that still exist.

Other topics that came up during the Q&A included spinal stenosis, hip and knee replacements, and other types of operations performed at Hadassah hospital.

One person asked Friedman if Israeli surgeons have became familiar with the consequences of car bombs and suicide bombs and now, since American soldiers are experiencing those types of injuries in Iraq, whether there is any blending of American and Israeli expertise.

"I think that what the [American] experts can learn from us is not the treatment of individual injuries, but how to deal with mass casualties," the doctor responded. "With that we have a lot of experience, having many more wounded people than there are physicians to care for them. We have a lot of that."

Friedman was born in Cluj, Romania, in 1963 and emigrated to Israel in 1971. He attended medical school from 1985-91 at Hebrew University-Hadassah, Jerusalem, and from 1997-99 he attended the School of Continuing Medical Education, Sports Medicine and Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv.

With a record of extensive medical service from 1992 to the present, Friedman specialized in orthopedic surgery, particularly spinal surgery, during his residency.

In 1992 he was named Internist of the Year at Hadassah Hospital.

In 2002 he became an orthopedic fellow in knee surgery at the North Sydney Orthopedic and Sports Medicine Center, Sydney Australia, and continued his work in shoulder and elbow surgery at the Royal North Shore Hospital, also in Sydney.

From 2002-06 he served as an instructor in orthopedic surgery at Hebrew University Medical School and as a lecturer in orthopedic medicine.

He has published numerous articles on medical techniques and is a member of the Israeli Medical Association and the Israeli Society for Sports Medicine.

Hadassah chapter President Susan Goldman said, "The Hadassah organization is one of the leading institutions in health care. It is comprised of two medical facilities in Israel, the Hadassah Hebrew University Medical Center, Ein Keriem and the Hadassah University Hospital at Mount Scopus."

She said the Hadassah medical organization places a great deal of emphasis on clinical and scientific research with the aim of researching and improving medical care.

Goldman said the Hadassah medical organization in Israel established the country's first gene therapy center, a bone marrow transplant unit, a cancer care center, a hospice and a neonatal unit.

Additionally, she said, there is a trauma unit, a burn unit, a skin bank, and nursing and dental schools. There is also a public health service system, a modern health facility in Jerusalem and a mother and child center.

The Mediscope program brings medical personnel from the Hadassah medical center in Israel to the United States for tours, she explained, noting that it gives the members of Hadassah a chance to learn about the latest medical advances and techniques being done at the medical center in Israel.

Also attending the April 19 program was Shelly Kaplan, president of the South Jersey Region for Hadassah.