Wednesday, January 24, 2018

Madrasa Teacher Inspired Pakistani-American to Transform Medical Education Online

Inspired by a madrasa teacher in Islamabad, Pakistani-American Dr. Husain Sattar is revolutionizing medical education in a similar way that Salman Khan of Khan Academy has transformed K-12 education. Dr. Sattar has written a widely used medical textbook titled "Fundamentals of Pathology" along with a series of videos called Pathoma available online.

Professor Husain Sattar M.D.
University of Chicago Professor:

Currently an Associate Professor at  the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine, Dr. Sattar credits his innovation to his madrasa teacher who had the "ability to take vast amounts of information and summarize it in the most eloquent, simple, principle-based method", according to a piece written by Nancy Averett and published on the University of Chicago website.

Madrasa Education:

Born in Chicago in 1972, Dr. Husain Sattar, MD, took a leave of absence after first year of medical school in the United States to study Arabic and Islamic spirituality in Islamabad, Pakistan.  It was in a spartan setting with a classroom that had clay walls that would heat up to 120 degrees in summer. In winter, the unheated classrooms were freezing — Islamabad sits at the foothills of the Himalayas — where Sattar sat on the floor with the other students shivering and dreaming of summer.

At the Islamabad madrasa, Averett writes that there was a "Pakistani teacher who made an impression on Sattar — one that planted the seed for Sattar’s wildly successful textbook and video series on pathology known as Pathoma".

 “This teacher always came to class without notes,” Sattar told Averett, recalling the instructor with the gray beard who smiled often and dressed in the traditional Pakistani garb of loose pants (shalwar) and tunic-like shirt (kameez). “He would say, ‘If I can’t tell you about it from the top of my head, then I shouldn’t be telling you about it at all.’” The man lectured passionately, as if there were 3,000 people in the room instead of eight, but what the young American medical student found most impressive was his skill distilling colossal amounts of material. “He had this ability to take vast amounts of information and summarize it in the most eloquent, simple, principle-based method,” Sattar said.

Pathoma:

Dr. Husain Sattar has written a widely used medical textbook titled "Fundamentals of Pathology" along with a series of videos called Pathoma available online.

Thousands of medical students who use Pathoma talk about the clarity with which Dr. Sattar explains difficult concepts. “He has a remarkable gift for clarity,” Averett quotes Palmer Greene, a third-year student at the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine, as saying. “He can take the pathophysiology of any organ system and present the information in a way that makes the entire mechanism click in your head.” Lucy Rubin, a fourth-year at Tufts University School of Medicine, has similar praise: “He has this amazing way of explaining concepts,” she said. “He simplifies things to the most basic elements.”

Summary:

Inspired by a madrasa teacher in Islamabad, Pakistani-American Dr. Husain Sattar is revolutionizing medical education in a similar way that Salman Khan of Khan Academy has transformed K-12 education. Dr. Sattar has written a widely used medical textbook titled "Fundamentals of Pathology" along with a series of videos called Pathoma available online. One good teacher in a spartan Islamabad seminary inspired a young Pakistani-American, Husain Sattar, to study medicine and create learning material that has revolutionized medical education for many generations of healers to serve humanity better.

Acknowledgement: I thank my Pakistani-American friend Rizwan Kadir, a University of Chicago alumnus, for bringing Dr. Sattar's work to my attention.

Related Links:

Haq's Musings

Khan Academy

Obama Honors Pakistani-American Doctor With Top Award

Pakistan is the 3rd Largest Source of Foreign Doctors in America

Hindus and Muslims Well Educated in America But Least Educated Worldwide

Pakistanis Make Up Silicon Valley's Largest Foreign Born Muslims Group

2017: The Year Islamophobia Went Mainstream

Pakistani-American Shahid Khan is the Richest South Asian in America

6 comments:

Rizwan K. said...

We were at Uchicago together when I was at the b-school, and he was doing his MD

Shehryar H. said...

He has just one video from 6 years ago on his youtube channel. Is there any other site with the series?

Riaz Haq said...

SH: "He has just one video from 6 years ago on his youtube channel. Is there any other site with the series?"

It's by subscription...part of it free and the rest is fee-based http://www.pathoma.com/features-and-pricing

Z Basha Jr said...

Inspiring story. Looks like a spiritual man to me. Hope he can return to Islamabad one day as country needs him. And make his knowledge available free of cost.

Rizwan A. said...

Professor Sattar is also a Shaikh of the Naqshabandi Sufi order. Many young American Muslims are his disciples. He has also written a book on teaching Arabic using the classical method used in Pakistan and India for centuries: https://www.amazon.com/Fundamentals-Classical-Arabic-Husain-Sattar/dp/0971276110/ref=la_B00O1V736I_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1516908097&sr=1-1

Riaz Haq said...

THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE > PAKISTAN
Pakistani cardiologist honoured with Britain’s Young Investigators Award

https://tribune.com.pk/story/1618976/1-pakistani-cardiologist-honoured-britains-young-investigators-award/

A young Pakistani cardiologist, Jaffar Khan, has won the British Cardiovascular Intervention Society’s prestigious 2018 Young Investigators Award.

The doctor had conducted first successful set of surgeries on humans using Jaffar’s procedure.

The cardiologist used a procedure, which is medically described as ‘laceration of the anterior mitral valve leaflet to prevent outflow track obstruction,’ nicknamed with the acronym “LAMPOON”.

“LAMPOON is a procedure I invented at the National Institutes of Health in America. It is a ‘keyhole’ cardiac surgery technique that resects heart tissue for the first time using minimally invasive techniques,” Jaffar said.

The research involved invention of the concept, testing in animals, and translation into humans.

“I am now the clinical lead for an FDA approved clinical trial together with Dr Robert Lederman, head of the cardiovascular intervention branch at NIH,” he said.

This week, a Pakistani student bagged the highest marks in Syllabus D Mathematics in the Cambridge Examinations 2017, Express News reported.


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https://www.dicardiology.com/content/henry-ford-hospital-cardiologist-performs-pioneering-laser-mitral-valve-treatment

A Henry Ford Hospital cardiologist is pioneering a promising new procedure to improve the success of mitral valve replacement.

Interventional cardiologist Adam Greenbaum, M.D., medical co-director of the Center For Structural Heart Disease at Henry Ford Hospital, believes the procedure — slicing a leaflet with an electrified wire through a tiny catheter before replacing a mitral valve — will save thousands of lives.

Greenbaum helped perform the first procedure in man on May 25, 2016 at Emory University in Atlanta and led the second procedure at Henry Ford Hospital on June 8. Since then, cardiologists have performed nine of the highly specialized procedures, six at Henry Ford Hospital.

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The LAMPOON procedure is designed for patients who need a new mitral valve. The mitral valve regulates the flow of blood between the left top and bottom chambers of the heart after it has been oxygenated in the lungs. The ventricle then squeezes the blood out through the aortic valve and into the body.

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In open-heart surgery, doctors cut away the blocking tissues. That is not an option for those too sick to undergo open-heart surgery, leading Greenbaum and his team to search for an alternative.

In the catheter-based LAMPOON procedure, the cardiologist weaves a catheter through the patient’s blood vessels and into the heart. The doctor then uses an electrified wire about the size of a sewing thread woven through the catheter to slice away the problem tissue.

“We don’t know how many people have been turned away due to their anatomic risk,” said Greenbaum. “Now we think we have conquered that obstacle.”

Greenbaum has been working with interventional cardiologist Robert J. Lederman, M.D., and fellow Jaffar Khan, M.D., at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, who first performed the technique in animals; and Vasilis C. Babaliaros at Emory University School of Medicine, who performed the first human procedure in May.

Greenbaum and Lederman also performed the first transcaval access procedure in man, a novel way to access the heart by connecting blood vessels in the abdomen. A multi-center study of the procedure recently reported a 98 percent success rate for the procedure.