March is women’s international month. It is also endometriosis awareness month, a condition that you successfully treat at the Endomedicare Academy. What is an endometriosis patient for you?
The endometriosis patient is certainly a fighter, which is why the word “endowarrior”, in my opinion, is the one that not only characterises a patient profile, but honours the strength of the person who rises daily after the fight with chronic pain, infertility and the other effects of this disease, that torment and invalidate them in all roles, roles that are equally fulfilled with fragility and strength, as a couple, in their families and in society.
You have an impressive professional career. You are both by definition and by experience a surgeon of excellence. When did you know you wanted to do surgery?
I knew that regardless of the speciality I chose, I would dedicate myself body and soul to my patients and the profession that chose me. The choice of surgery is an assumed decision, without half measures. Out of the desire to help as many patients as possible, a surgeon spends a lot of time studying and learning surgical skills which involves a majority of time in the operating room. Moreover, the training process of the team and other surgeons that I train in minimally invasive gynecologic surgery requires effort and, at the same time, challenges the limits that younger surgeons have to overcome. All this career path builds the path to Excellence for those who are prepared to walk it, doubling passion with sustained effort and personal sacrifices. The objective is one: the joy of our performance is dedicated to the health and well-being of patients who need us.
You do extraordinarily hard work, give suffering women a new life, help them become mothers. What motivates you?
The answer comes naturally. When after “hard work”, where the struggle and effort belong primarily to our patients, you see that you contributed to a better life, by offering the appropriate therapeutic solution, that helped the patient regain their health and quality of life or become mother, after years of infertility, these are great achievements of the profession and what motivates us, at the same time.
You are a renowned gynaecological surgeon worldwide who surgically approaches a wide range of gynaecological conditions and onco gynecology. You are also among the few women who perform minimally invasive surgery, at the level of excellence. Is it an advanced level, is this performance difficult to achieve?
I am honoured by these qualifications, that are based on 20 years of professional training in the vast spectrum of gynecological surgery, from the treatment of benign conditions, endometriosis, adenomyosis, uterine fibroids, to serious oncological suffering, difficult cases of cervical cancer, endometrium or ovarian cancer. The transition from classical surgery, to vaginal surgery and then to minimally invasive surgery, laparoscopy or robotics, all these milestones in surgical training allowed me differentiating approaches and challenged me to find new surgical solutions that will offer the best alternative therapeutic for patients. The current trend in surgery is minimal invasiveness, it is the most advanced method that we can put into practice today with the help of new technologies.
“Endomedicare Academy is a multidisciplinary centre, integrated around the most experienced surgical team in Romania, designed to offer one-stop-shop surgery”
You founded an academy entirely dedicated to endometriosis. Moreover, you are a mentor for the younger generation of doctors, and a source of inspiration for your colleagues. What part of your career attracts you the most, surgery or academics?
It’s a very good question, but I can’t express a “preference”. Both roles determine the expertise, with their own perspectives, one of a theoretical order, the other from the perspective of the practitioner. I can only see them as complementary, and the expertise is essentially consensual between theory and practice, relative to the usefulness of the training medical process.
What is Elvira Bratilă like?
Looking back, I consider myself a fulfilled and certainly a person determined and dedicated to people, patients, and the medical teams that I formed, colleagues that I guide in their professional path. By contributing to the formation of a school of minimally invasive surgery in gynaecology, that is seen as a dream hard to achieve, I consider it a dream already fulfilled.
Returning to Endomedicare Academy, how was this project created and what makes it unique?
Endomedicare Academy is a multidisciplinary centre, integrated around the most experienced surgical team in Romania, designed to offer “one-stop-shop surgery”, i.e. surgery for excision of endometriosis lesions, complete, correct and minimally invasive, from the first intervention. We are constantly aware of our scope, in order to avoid repeated surgeries and to reduce the risk of recurrence. We are a united and consolidated team around the endometriosis patient offering minimally invasive surgery, at the internationally accepted quality standards and validated by EuroEndoCert, offering personalised and unique therapeutic solutions, since each patient is unique.
The “Endomedicare Academy ” concept is built around the verb “to care”, translated as follows: quality medical care for endometriosis patients, 360 degrees around the patient, in a medical and holistic approach, body, mind, spirit. Each case is unique and complex in its essence.
Endometriosis is a complex disease that requires multidisciplinary treatment. At the Endomedicare Academy, you have an exceptional team by your side, part of which I got to know as a patient. You also have an exceptional general surgeon, Dr Rubin Munteanu, with the most surgical experience in Romania. How important is it to work with surgeons who are aces in their field?
Surgery is not a “one-person-show”, it is a contribution of a team that is allied to a common goal: the best for our patients. To offer the endometriosis patient an integrated approach, under the umbrella of a Center of Excellence, the sine-qua-non condition is the highly-specialised team in treating this disease and its complex forms, such as deep infiltrative endometriosis. Dr Rubin Munteanu is really an ace in the surgery of this difficult to manage form, and the cases we performed together and the lack of complications in our team’s experience confirm the choice of the most experienced team of endometriosis specialists in Romania. We have been together for over 6 years in this chemistry and we enjoy the performance, in a country where “everything is old and everything is new.”
You are one of the two endometriosis specialists in Romania, who run EuroEndo Cert certified endometriosis centres, following an external audit. You didn’t call yourself a Center of Excellence, you were given this title. What does this certification represent?
Endomedicare Academy received EuroEndoCert and European Endometriosis League validation and the title of “Center of Excellence in the diagnosis and treatment of endometriosis” 2 years ago. The certification of centres specialised in endometriosis requires compliance with quality criteria and standards that external auditors, centres specialised in pathology, request to see in the certification process. The meeting of these criterias and norms validates the expertise of the centre and offers the guarantee of credibility in relation to the medical services offered to patients.
“At the upcoming Endometriosis European Congress 4 minimally invasive interventions for complex cases of endometriosis will be transmitted from the Memorial Hospital in Bucharest and from Porto Spain. The interventions in Bucharest will be performed by myself, Prof. Horace Roman and Mr. Shaheen Khazali, and the intervention in Porto will be performed by Dr. Helder Ferreira”
In June, the whole medical world will be watching you and Romania. The European Endometriosis Congress with you as a president will take place in Bucharest. What can you tell us about the science program?
Held under the auspices of the European Endometriosis League, the European Congress of Endometriosis will certainly be a reference event, with renowned specialists from all over the world, announcing their participation already.
The scientific program covers the broad spectrum of the pathology, and the Congress events will certainly bring new perspectives and innovative approaches, in a pathology that never ceases to surprise us, by the complexity, by the specificity of the cases, by the multiple facets and forms of manifestation of the disease. I am talking about the announced scientific program: Endometriosis School, Endometriosis ultrasound diagnosis course, and of course, the Live-surgery session, which will bring to the attention of the Congress participants 4 minimally invasive interventions for complex cases of endometriosis, transmitted from the Memorial Hospital in Bucharest and from Porto Spain. The interventions in Bucharest will be performed by myself, Prof. Horace Roman and Mr. Shaheen Khazali, and the intervention in Porto will be performed by Dr. Helder Ferreira.
Do you have a message for colleagues from around the world who will visit Romania, as a point of reference on the endometriosis map?
I am honoured to host this large-scale scientific event in Romania, the European Endometriosis Congress being a landmark event in this field of endometriosis research and knowledge, a good opportunity to see colleagues from Europe and the world, renowned specialists in this pathology, again in Bucharest. The fact that Romania will become a point of reference on the honourable map of expertise in the diagnosis, treatment and minimally invasive surgery of endometriosis motivates me in my course to bring into synergy the opinion of relevant experts worldwide, in a pathology that requires overspecialization. I will be happy to welcome our guests in Bucharest, Romania, in June.