Dr. Alejandro Badia is a hand and upper extremity surgeon who has a passion for surgeon education and training. Badia recently opened the Badia Hand to Shoulder Center and currently sits on the surgical advisory board of the DaVinci Center, both in the Miami area. The Center is the world’s largest surgical training lab and offers weekly courses and distance-learning capabilities. Upon receiving his medical degree at New York University, Dr. Badia went on to a Hand and Upper Extremity Fellowship at Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh.

What inspired you to specialize in hand and upper extremity surgery?
My grandmother had really crippling Rheumatoid Arthritis. I remember when I was about 8 or 9 years old, we went to New York to see a hand surgeon. I remember looking around at all these diplomas and interesting pictures and I saw how he was trying to help my grandmother. I remember being very inspired by it.

Is there a particular condition or type of technology that most interests you?
I’m probably one of the most published doctors on the arthroscopic management of basal joint arthritis of the thumb. That is a really common condition. Arthroscopically, I can go in with a 1.9 millimeter camera and look at the joint, determine if it is arthritic and then stage it — stage one, two or three — and determine the type of treatment. That has been a huge area of interest for me and I think that would really revolutionize the way the basal joint is treated.

What is the patient’s role in hand surgery?
A lot of things that we do now are consumer-driven. A person just wrote me from Alaska who wants to fly to Miami because the local surgeons want to remove his bone and it doesn’t sound normal to him. So, patients are now demanding these things because they can really educate themselves with the Internet.

How do you explain the surgical procedure to your patients?
It is interesting because when the patients fly to Miami, we have already communicated three or four times. We can really cut right to the chase. I can explain, in front of them, what I’m going to do. I show the patient videos, sometimes of the procedure, or interviews with patients who have had a similar procedure. I don’t have a chart; it is all on a computer monitor that swivels and faces the patient. I show them their own X-rays right on the screen, and I can show them what we are going to do in an interesting visual manner.

Then they understand what the actual placement looks like. They can conceptualize it better.

You are a proponent of teaching and educating other surgeons. Can you talk about how you are doing this?
I built my practice with teaching in mind and continue to expand on that. In one of the three operating rooms, I have cameras so I can record surgeries for a video library. I can transmit them right to a conference room located in my office. So, a live surgery can actually be viewed by people visiting. Those images can also be transmitted nationally and internationally to do what we call distance learning. We see that as the future.

You are now expanding the role of the DaVinci Center. Can you explain what that is about?
DaVinci will be the world’s largest surgical training lab. It’s a cadaver lab that will eventually have 40 stations. It’s just cadaver work with distance-learning capabilities. We don’t see patients at DaVinci.

But, my goal here really is education. Education is the key to everything. I don’t try to monopolize that. I try to educate other surgeons, and at the same time, they educate me. When they come to visit and spend anywhere from four or five days to three months, I get to learn a lot from them.

The patient and surgery side of your business is growing. How do you think that has influenced your approach to patient care?
This speaks for any surgeon who goes to conferences regularly, whether national or international. You get exposed to other ways of doing things. So you are not necessarily offering a patient something you learned when you were a resident or hand surgery fellow. I was at a European meeting about a month ago and I picked up two or three different things. I can offer that to a patient, rather than just being stuck doing the same thing because I say, well, it works for me and that’s it.

But, I think we can always improve. Really, contacting a lot of different surgeons and discussing topics allows you to offer patients a lot more options.

Would you classify arthroscopy as a technology that has the potential to impact patient care?
I think it has a huge impact. These people walk around with pain in the joints in their hand or wrist for years because it is not so commonplace in the surgical community to do these surgeries. So, the growth of arthroscopic surgeries in small joints is having a huge impact. Certain things that weren’t possible before are now possible.

I think the other aspect that is being refined is joint replacement in the hand, wrist, and entire upper extremity. It’s now common place and the public knows that hip and knee replacements really work and people do well, right? People have no idea that we do the same thing in the hand.

Are there other types of advancements that you see coming?
Osteobiologics. Meaning that there are a lot of biologic chemical things that we are going to be using in the future that will supplant certain surgeries. In the future, we may also be able to inject materials into joints to arrest the course of osteoarthritis.

Dr. Badia is a member of the American Society for Surgery of the Hand, the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons and the American Association for Hand Surgery. For more information on Dr. Badia or the DaVinci Center, please visit: Dr. Badia.com.