I am currently writing another article about Dr. Geraldo Victoria for Examiner.com but I wanted to tell readers a bit about these two very nice, and charming surgeons. (I will also be re-posting this article at a sister site). Dr. Victoria graciously invited me to spend even more time with them, but I had a minor injury yesterday and had to defer.

It’s always a bit nerve-wracking to meet and talk to surgeons but Dr. Victoria was very welcoming, and friendly.  He readily answered my questions and told me about his practice.

Dr. Victoria is primarily Spanish-speaking but does speak some English.

He showed me around his offices at both Hospital San Tomas and Punto Pacifico while talking about his work.  He is a Professor of Surgery at Hospital Santo Tomas – which is the primary teaching facility in Panama City.  He also operates as a general surgeon there.

His practice is a mix of cardiac, thoracic, vascular, endovascular and general surgery.  He attended medical school and completed the majority of his training in Caracas, Venezuela at the Luis Razetti School of Medicine  – University of Central Venezuela.  He completed his general surgery and specialty fellowship training at the University Hospital of Caracas (Hospital Universidad de Caracas) before completing additional training sessions in cardiac (Texas Heart) and endovascular surgery in New Orléans, La.

He reports that prior to 1992, the majority of patients in Panama travelled to the United States and other countries for cardiac surgery.  Since then cardiac surgery volumes have increased.  Since rheumatic fever remains problematic in Panama, he has a large volume of patients with rheumatic heart disease.

His thoracic practice largely consists of trauma surgery – from penetrating trauma (guns, knives) and hemothoraces as is typical of many surgical practices in large urban areas.   He also sees cases of empyema (infected pleural space around the lung) with several cases involving multi-drug resistant strains of Klebsiella.

Contrary to many vascular surgery practices I have encountered in Latin America, Dr. Victoria has a thriving peripheral arterial disease (PAD) practice. In fact, I was able to see him in action in the cath lab as he performed arteriography on a patient with persistent intermitten claudication (despite medical management).

Since this post is becoming quite lengthy – I will talk about Dr. Sanchez in the next post.