Of the dozens of prestigious awards, certificates, and diplomas hanging in his office, Dr. Mas Massoumi finds the most meaning in a plaque honoring his work as Palm Beach County Medical Society’s president from 1992 to 1993.
The Iranian-born orthopedic hand surgeon is still deeply touched that his local medical colleagues elected him as their 74th president.
“They understand that it doesn’t matter where I was born,” said Dr. Massoumi, who gets emotional thinking about the personal and professional friendships he has developed in the Medical Society.
In his 44 years in medicine, Dr. Massoumi has earned an international reputation for his advancement to the field of hand surgery.
He has worked on more than 17,000 patients, including celebrity golfers, tennis players and other athletes.
He has sat on numerous national and international medical boards, and has presented and lectured on dozens of surgical topics.
This fall, he was given the opportunity to speak on a topic of his choice at the Triennial Congress of the International Federation of Societies for Surgery of the Hand in Seoul, South Korea. He discussed the need for multiple, simultaneous surgical procedures of the complex upper extremity problems.
Dr. Massoumi’s 14-page resume is full of significant accomplishments like this, yet the affable, tireless and innovative 69-year-old surgeon doesn’t consider his work complete. He says he wants to share his skills and contacts to help people in developing countries.
He hopes someday to create an organization called Hands Around the World, which would convert an airplane into a flying hospital and enable surgeons like him to perform operations in remote places that have limited medical resources. Complete with a pilot, nurse, therapists and anesthesiologist, the plane could conduct medical missions to provide advanced care.
Dr. Massoumi says his desire to help others and excel in medicine came at a young age, and he attributes his ambitions to his mother. She single-handedly raised him and his three sisters after their father died at an early age.
“She forced me to go to summer school, and I didn’t like it,” Dr. Massoumi said. “But it got me motivated. From there, I was always at the head of my class.”
He always knew he wanted to be a surgeon. In high school, he took apart an entire chicken’s skeleton bones and then wired it back together. Growing up in Iran, he saw poor people in rural areas dying because they didn’t have access to medical care. “No one could help them,” he said. “My goal was to become a doctor and help them.”
He graduated from Tehran University Medical School in 1966 and spent the next several years working as an intern, casualty officer and orthopedic house surgeon in England. In 1969 he did his surgical residency at Buffalo University.
In 1970, he landed a prestigious residency in orthopedics at George Washington University Medical Center and affiliated hospitals in Washington, D.C. Three years later, he received a fellowship in microsurgery and hand surgery at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia, where their first child, Lila, was born.
His years as a resident and fellow exposed him to some of the country’s leading doctors and mentors. Under their tutelage, the young Dr. Massoumi performed a hip replacement surgery on a four-star military general.
After that success, Dr. Massoumi developed the confidence to start his own practice and relocated to the warmer climes of Palm Beach County.
He became an affiliated physician at St. Mary’s and Good Samaritan Medical Centers in West Palm Beach in 1974. He later chaired the surgery department at the former Doctor’s Hospital in Lake Worth.
As he gained more experience, and there was more demand for Dr. Massoumi’s skill in hand surgery, micro-neurovascular surgery and reconstructive surgery of the upper extremity, he limited his practice to upper extremities. He became the leading doctor for the most difficult procedures.
“As soon as other doctors smelled trouble and couldn’t handle it, they sent their patients to me,” Dr. Massoumi said.
The leadership roles followed.
He was instrumental in the creation of the Palm Beach County Healthcare District and two trauma centers: St. Mary’s and Delray Medical Centers.
He was also instrumental in bringing the open heart surgery program to JFK Medical Center. The famed Dr. Michael Debakey was consulting for a new open heart surgical center but they needed a hand surgeon who was qualified to do microsurgery in case there were complications in complex procedures while drawing blood from arteries of the wrist and/or forearms that would jeopardize the circulation of the hand, and they could not have the open heart program without this kind of hand surgeon. So JFK administrators contacted Dr. Massoumi and offered him this prestigious position on the open heart team without having to take Emergency Room call, as other surgeons were required, until they were able to attract other hand surgeons who were trained to do such complex microsurgeries, if it was necessary.
He worked his way up to become president of the Medical Society. He was named chairman of the Medical Advisory Council for the Rehabilitation Center for Children and Adults from 1994-1996 and since that time he has been a Member of the Board of Governors for this prestigious charitable organization. He became a member of the Oversight Committee for Doctor’s Health Plan in the Florida Medical Association/Florida Osteopathic Medical Association in 1995. In all, Dr. Massoumi has held in his career more than 30 roles as an officer or a member of committees.
Still, no matter how busy his medical work became, he always made time for his family. He and his wife, Roshan, who has been a member of the Palm Beach County Medical Society’s Alliance Board of Directors, raised two children, both of whom have successful careers in their fields. Their daughter, Lila, is a psychiatrist in Michigan. Their son, Cyrus, who was born in West Palm Beach, is the co-founder and CEO of www.ZocDoc.com, which helps patients conveniently find and schedule physician and dentist appointments. Forbes Magazine named ZocDoc the best start-up company in the U.S. in April 2009. This company is currently active in New York City, Washington, D.C., Chicago, San Francisco, and Dallas, and plans to expand to the rest of the country in the future.
Asked what else he wants to do in life, Dr. Massoumi says, in addition to charity work, he would like to write books about his medical stories.
Dr. Massoumi says he is grateful for a career that has enabled him to help so many.
“I’ve been lucky,” he said. “Helping patients is the greatest honor.”
