20 March, 2018
Member of the IMS Board
The IMS Board works tirelessly to support the aims of the Society and to ensure that the best educational resources and updates on research are available to all the membership. However, do you really know who they are? This new occasional profile series gives you the opportunity to learn more about each Board member, providing a personal perspective and insight into the people who represent the leadership of the Society.
Professor Steven Goldstein
Is Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at New York University School of Medicine and Treasurer of the International Menopause Society.
I’ve been reading
Cells are The New Cure by Robin L. Smith, MD and Max Gomez, PhD. This is a cutting-edge look for an intelligent lay-audience by two scientists about the current and future use of stem cells.
I’ve been researching
Making the diagnosis of abnormal uterine bleeding/postmenopausal bleeding truly ‘point of care’. In some cases, this means sonohysterography and, in other cases, these new disposable office hysteroscopes.
My team
Since I am not subspecialty trained, I do not have a ‘division’ but am able to call on very astute colleagues from all major areas of Ob/Gyn in my institution at New York University School of Medicine.
An anecdote
I recently had a total knee replacement. I was signed up to be done by the head orthopedist at the number one-rated orthopedic hospital not only in New York, but in the United States. I subsequently had another opinion with a doctor at my own institution. He performed not only an X-ray of the knee but a scan of my lower extremities. It was clearly obvious (even to my untrained eye) that the polyethylene in my 15-year-old right hip replacement had almost worn through. He informed me that, if this were allowed to totally wear through so that the titanium implants rubbed on each other causing them to loosen, that this would be a major problem. Needless to say, I switched physicians and had my knee fixed and am in the process of planning a revision on my hip as well. The lesson is, we must see the whole patient and not just use such tunnel vision as the first surgeon exercised.
An interesting case
I was once asked to perform a transvaginal ultrasound on a sterile gorilla at The Bronx Zoo when they were moving the animals to a different portion of the facility. Once anesthetized, the animals were brought into the zoo’s hospital where various medical specialists evaluated the gorillas. This one female gorilla had never become pregnant. Dressed in hospital gown and glove, I began to perform a transvaginal ultrasound. The adult female gorilla has a short stubby vagina and axial uterus. This made visualization of the pelvis virtually impossible. They say that necessity is the mother of invention. I put the probe into the rectum, turned it 90 degrees and got beautiful images of the endometrial echo which was thin and there were ‘streaked’ ovaries. If there ever were such a thing as a Turner’s Syndrome in a gorilla, this was it. With the head veterinarian, we wrote a paper that transvaginal ultrasound was of limited value in the species gorilla gorilla gorilla. Since that time, in young virgins and older patients with a stenotic vagina, I have routinely performed transrectal ultrasound with great success.