Have Ticket, Will Travel

Robert J. DeMuth, M.D. '51 will take volunteer surgical care anywhere you can get him.

As you read this article, it's likely that Robert J. DeMuth, M.D. '51 is in Pecs, Hungary, with a medical team from the University of Pennsylvania. Or perhaps he's in Bulgaria with Surgical Aid to Children of the World (SACAW). These are two trips on the calendar of DeMuth, a retired plastic surgeon who travels the world providing volunteer surgical care.

DeMuth's volunteerism began in 1973, while in private practice in Erie, Pennsylvania. One of his two partners had heard about Project Hope and proposed that each partner volunteer six weeks on a Project Hope ship. DeMuth spent six weeks in Maceio, Brazil, with his young family. "It was a marvelous experience for them and for me," says DeMuth. It also showed him the tremendous need that exists in foreign countries for the treatments of cleft lips and palates, burn scars, and congenital deformities.

But his next volunteer trip wasn't until the mid-1980s. DeMuth was then a faculty member in plastic surgery at the Oregon Health Sciences University, when he heard about Northwest Medical Teams International, an organization of volunteer health care professionals that assists the needy worldwide, and he soon became their volunteer director of plastic surgery. For the next several years, DeMuth made one or two trips a year, providing volunteer surgeries, primarily on children. By 1991, he was ready to retire and make a greater commitment to volunteerism.

"The practice of medicine in the United States had become so infiltrated by bureaucracy, not to mention the litigation environment that assumes doctors guilty until proven innocent," says DeMuth. "By 1991, the number of staff I had had doubled just to take care of the red tape, and I was only spending about 25 percent of my time actually practicing medicine."

DeMuth now makes approximately four volunteer trips a year, ranging in length from a week to a month. To date, he's made 29 trips to 13 countries, performing thousands of surgeries at no cost to the patient. "Anybody buys me a plane ticket, I'll go," says DeMuth, who played football and basketball at Hobart and was captain of the 1951 lacrosse team, ranked eighth in the nation.

"Generally, the number of surgeons doing this work is not sufficient to take care of the poverty sections of these countries," he says. "These are not necessarily third-world countries, but they don't take care of their poor. There aren't as many plastic surgeons as there are in the United States and the doctors only want to care for their private patients."

As a result, surgeries considered routine in the United States simply aren't performed on poor children, resulting in life-long deformity. Parents often hide their children out of embarrassment. People who suffer from cleft lip and palate are also at great risk for respiratory infections and disease, and the conditions cause speech impediments.

That's why DeMuth prefers to take a team approach to providing care. "These kids usually have a multitude of problems," he says. "You can't just sew up their lip and palate and be done with it. Usually their teeth are crooked and their speech is messed up. It takes a team of specialists."

DeMuth has already helped the Pecs Children's Hospital in Pecs, Hungary, establish a multidisciplinary team to treat children in that region. He'll be back for his third visit this August with a speech pathologist, orthodontist, and nurse to work with the Hungarian professionals for a week on problem cases.

"I'm doing what I'm trained for and the paperwork is minimal," says Demuth, who volunteers through several different organizations. "It's also extremely rewarding. The patients are able to live healthy, normal lives. Patients give you a hug or shake your hand. They're so thankful."