Del Rio's urologist believes physician collaboration improves local medicine

June 10, 2007
By Bill Sontag
Feature Writer

Dr. Shamoon Doctor sees 60 to 70 patients a week at his practice, 1205 Bedell Avenue, and about 25 of that number are new to his growing practice. Del Rio’s growth and Doctor’s solo act in this field of specialization here are only partial explanations for the soaring caseload.

As with many other local physicians, Shamoon Doctor and his family – wife Eileen, daughter Shaleen, 18, and son, Nishaan, 15 – came to Del Rio, in 2002, recognizing the opportunity reflected in the medical needs of a growing populace. But Doctor’s enthusiasm for practice in southwest Texas is focused now on generally improved medical service to patients, regardless of the type of malady or dysfunction that first sends a patient in search of help.

“Communities have to grow. They can’t stay the way they were 20 years ago. Things change, and nothing stays the same,” Doctor affirmed, anticipating the dawn of new treatment options for patients throughout the region. While recognizing that many more specialists should be recruited to Del Rio, Doctor frowns at the common cynicism, “To get good medical care, you have to go to San Antonio.”

Doctor’s profession has drawn him to a rich diversity of communities where he’s observed how physicians work together for the common good of practitioners and patients. Doctor’s surname came about in the mid-19th century when his great, great grandfather translated the family name – Hakim – to Doctor, in deference to the influence of the British Empire in India at the time.

Doctor received his basic medical education in Hyderabad, a city in southeast India with a current population of more than 3.6 million, then moved to Canada where his brother is an accountant. There he met Eileen, and they married in 1984. Doctor attended Dalhousie University at Halifax, Nova Scotia, and completed his residency there, later creating his first practice at Oshawa, a lakeside community on the eastern edge of Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

“What I enjoy most about urology is that a lot of the work is conducted through endoscopies, and this was one of the first specialties to use it,” Doctor said, Tuesday (May 1). “Any opening you can look into with a telescope and lens [in a flexible tube] is endoscopic work.” It’s not a recent technology, Doctor said, explaining its roots in Vienna, 1879, when Dr. Maximilian Nitze and instrument maker Josef Leiter introduced the first cystoscope.

Now, endoscopy is used as a minimally invasive, diagnostic procedure not only in urinary examinations, but also in colon, chest, abdomen, reproductive tracts, and, more recently, the cardiovascular system. “But urology was probably the pioneer in this,” Doctor said. His practice here – with endoscopic and many other diagnostic and therapeutic procedures and technologies – includes treatments for problems of the kidney, bladder, prostate, and male external genitalia (vasectomies).

Doctor, Dr. Michele Di Blasi , invasive cardiologist, and other local physicians are examining the possibilities of proximally close collaboration to provide mutually supportive patient services. A north end medical center is being planned now by an architect, at Di Blasi’s new and growing practice, that may connect the offices and expertise of many disciplines, including Doctor’s.

“The idea is to get as many family practitioners and other specialties as we can so people can get all the services they need in one place,” Doctor said. “In larger cities, hospitals work with doctors who, in their own offices, do lab work and diagnostic examinations, with doctors grouped together by discipline. But here, we will be multi-disciplinary … I’m very committed right now, but I want to see the business plan and the office space that will be available,” Doctor said.

“I think this will fly. If the services are good, and if the physicians are there, the patients will come. For the city and the community, this will be much, much better, because people will have a choice of where to go,” said Doctor. He added that recruitment efforts directed at physicians with needed specializations have suffered because of local stagnation of status quo in the region.

“With many other physicians with different specialties in one location, I can see a patient with other [than urological] problems, and send them to other physicians and get lab work done with immediate results,” Doctor explained.

Beyond the immediate plans for a new medical complex, Doctor hopes recruitment efforts are successful for the city’s second urologist. “We are looking for another urologist, because our practice is really busy, too many patients really; Eagle Pass has lost their only urologist, and we’re getting a lot of patients from down there, now.”

Office hours for Doctor’s practice are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, with appointments made by calling 830-775-3025.