Last month, L. Scott Levin, MD, FACS, chair of Orthopaedic Surgery, and the Penn Orthopaedics team welcomed Myint Zan, PhD, a retired professor of law who has taught at various law schools outside of Burma (now Myanmar), and Bartlomiej Szostakowski, MD, an orthopaedic surgeon at the Maria Sklodowska Curie Memorial Cancer Centre and Institute of Oncology in Warsaw, Poland, to PPMC to deliver an Orthopaedic Surgery lecture.
The Inaugural San Baw, MD, GM’58 Honorary Lecture in Orthopaedic Innovation was endowed by Zan in the name of his late father, Dr. San Baw. Baw attended the Perelman School of Medicine in the 1950s, as did his wife, Myint Myint Khin, who completed her residency in Internal Medicine at Penn in 1955. After graduating, Baw pioneered the use of ivory hip prostheses and used handmade ivory hip replacements throughout his career in Burma until his death in 1984. His assistants continued the practice through the mid-1990s, with ivory being used to replace fractured thigh bones over the course of 35 years.
At the lecture, Zan — who also supports Palliative Care at Penn Medicine and established the San Baw, MD, GM’58 Memorial Fund in Palliative Oncology — delivered a tribute address in honor of his father’s legacy. Szostakowski then expanded the discussion, highlighting Baw’s achievements and celebrating him as a forgotten innovator in orthopaedic biologic reconstruction.
“This lecture emphasized the need to look back on the history of advances in medicine and surgery,” Levin said. “San Baw was an innovative, compassionate physician who pioneered techniques in hip arthroplasty. His contributions to the field can be attributed, in large part, to his training experience at Penn. We are delighted to perpetuate the legacy of this remarkable Orthopedic surgeon.”