16th Annual Patient Day
Your Mother Should Know, Your Doctor Should Know Better!
Patient Day - March 2, 2025
Einhorn Auditorium
Lenox Hill Hospital, New York City
Scientific Director
Dan Martin, MD
Program Director
Tamer Seckin, MD
Very warm. Welcome to all of you. We really had a spectacular two days bringing all surgeons and scientists in the world, the most prominent one. And I cannot describe the love and connection we had, some of them I never met. But these are true believers in this disease committed in their own country. Brazil, Romania, France, Belgium, China. I mean they were here. And we are doing this for, this is our, believe it or not, 16th year excluding Covid. We had serious meetings like this. It's just that we haven't been very active in social media. So support us, number one.
And also for the record, I want to tell you actually I'm the founder of this organization. Five years prior, it became public when Padma joined me. If it wasn't her voice, really we wouldn't be that much here because the people whose faces are familiar to everyone on television press this that they amplify. I mean everybody knows about it. Who would listen to a doctor from New York City yelling and screaming about this disease? It doesn't happen like that. So the power of media, the power at that time, it wasn't social media. 2015 years ago, 16, no, almost 20 years ago, 2006, I initiated formalized it. Actually I had this long time ago in my mind, but it never got materialized. But look where we come right now. We really created this foundation, created awareness not only in America, all throughout the world with those faces that spoke for us last year, we had Bindu Irving from Australia came here, she came here to support us and she has been one of the grateful people I had the pleasure to deal with and many of them. So I do appreciate their input.
I was going to say so many things, but overall world. Sorry, I was asked to stay on time. It's hard for me to stay on time on this. So let's try this. So it's not going to be be lecture, it's going to be some sort of awakening moment for all of you. One of the things that you see, a cartoon here, a woman trapped in her uterus. It's done by very powerful, well-known cartoonist, Luba, Koa, New York Times country cartoons. You're going to see her thing. But she did this for us. Actually this cartoon was done for endometrial. She also has multiple of these for reproductive justice, for inverted. But I just put one there. It's so powerful. Obviously this is a disease of post-industrial times of evolution. Women are not having kids early. The uterus is not created to have periods uterus created to have children.
That's how nature programmed it. But nature did not program the industrial revolution and women's equality. In other words, nature doesn't care about women the way we look right now. Maybe this is the way we are going to change things. I think there will be times that women may think will consider to have children early, start a family life early if they wish to. And every source of social justice elements will support that. There will be paid mothership, there will be paid everything. It should be done. Because I think that kind of life, what women have advantage over every other living, being in essence, even in other mammalians let's say. I think that's my philosophy. I think women have every opportunity to be supported what they wish to do really in the promotion of their happiness and their children. So I hope I don't go far on these things.
So these are, as you know, today's our theme is your mother should know and your doctor should know better. It's a Beatles song that I know for 40 years, maybe 60 years as long as Ironman since the age of 13. So we'll live with songs. The songs are nothing but the poetry that refers to our heart and mind with the music. Incredible harmony. And we grab every piece from that. Every song that some lyrics appeals to us and that's the power of songs. And I think yesterday there was a great speech by my ex department chief who was an ethicist. He aligned serious Beatles songs with endometriosis, which we don't. Who remembers Beatles here? Anyone? You remember Beatles from your parents. So one of the earliest build songs were hard days' night, right? So he referred, I'm also doing this with this permission. So the impact of endometrial on carries and their pain disrupts daily activists.
You name it, this is so cute. And comes help gaslighting, endometriosis. Everybody dismisses and minimize patient's symptoms, right? Okay, so hard day's night, right? Can't buy me love. There's hope. Here comes the sun. All you need is love, respect for autonomy, justice, integrity, professional competence and confidentiality. And also imagine a life. Patients are free of their pain. Right? That's good. So I never realized, I have two scientists here who are looking at my data. They really calculated this could be one digit less somewhere, but I can't believe I only last 10 years I have performed sent to pathology about almost 35,000 specimens. I told my daughter today, I was driving, she is an IVF specialist. I drove her to her clinic. Do you believe that I removed that much mini specimen from patient's pelvis and sent to pathology and asked pathologists, Hey, did I do a good job on this or is this really endo?
I could refer to patients, Hey, I removed it and sometimes she says she doesn't find it and I say, exhausted, find it. It's there and they find it. So there are 35,000 specimens there. So we have statistics hopefully, but this is not my, somebody else did these numbers for me. I didn't go there and count for personal whatever reasons. So I just want to summarize. You are not alone. This disease is so common. It is true. It's a condition in some many, maybe it's not a disease. In other words, end tissue could be there without causing any problem and you never know it by accident. It could be it's condition maybe, but there is a disease, 10% of the women and that disease because it becomes inflammation and it becomes fibrosis. It's the same thing that we had a discussion yesterday. It is like pimples.
Many of them goes away, but some of them leave mark ladies. And you know that I have some that you don't see, but I see it there from my puberty. It is the same thing. And there is more to it. It's really wound healing. These are, I want you to know all the power of the peritoneum is really the organ. If you really want to think about this organ, you don't. It's a membrane. Actually. It covers the hole from our diaphragm the way down. It's a single very beautiful layer that our bowel activity is lubricated. Do its job during your sleep. You don't even know it works. It's working. So endo is when endo affects, it affects this organ peritoneum. That's why the symptoms are so nonspecific. The disease stays enigmatic, unknown, secretive for 10 years and no doctors knows what it is because it is, the sensation of this area is not like your digital thing.
You can tell, close your eyes. Yeah, it's my middle finger. You can say that. But this area you cannot pinpoint. Maybe you can say right and right. It works. So I just want to educate you on that. And we don't want to call this superficial, the scientists started to call it superficial endometriosis. I've been pushing it. This is not endometriosis is not superficial disease. We're going to change. We're going to call it peritoneal endometriosis, which is originally, so I'm going to cut my slides here. But the first organ really the most important organ that's hit with endometriosis is not really the pelvis because it becomes a disease down here. It creates incredible impact in mind and it starts with panic. First, you don't know what's going on and you don't get support because it's going to come back again. The next month, anxiety starts, it's going to happen.
You feel anxious. And I do value the impact of recognizes this element because this is the part, this is the part never gets really realized by many caregivers. So it's very important to understand patient's mind. And what, so you have to spend a lot of time. So there is uterine pain, there is peritoneal pain. Uterine pain is central. Everybody experiences as soon as menstruation starts, it disappears in two days. Listen to a degree, it's acceptable modern times. But then if the pain continues beyond second day and start all these GI symptoms, bloatedness, gas, everything else, that's peritoneum, that's a little bit blood is going back and irritating things. And then that's what we call over years. That's endo. This is a cartoon again, sketched on one of my patients. I never forget her. And she's got a lot of, this is endo, right? And I say IBS is Bs until endo is ruled out.
I'm not saying real Bs, but it is not a bs. But it is BS if endo is not ruled out because if IBS symptoms are coinciding with periods and aggravated by flaring up with periods, if any doctor missing it, that's a big, and it's simple. One magic question. It's the unknown part of the puzzle piece is does the symptoms get bad with periods? And I think endometrioma, the chocolate cyst de cyst that they call it tell you it's a hemorrhagic cyst. Oh, it's going to go away. And your pain continuous on one side, on and on and on. Your doctor is wrong. Fire the doctor, move on because it's true. So chocolate cyst could be an emergency. Many patients end up in emergency room. A lot of young kids with this type of thing gets admitted to hospital. They get appendectomy and they come for real endosurgery later.
So chocolate cyst, when they rupture, it's really bad. It's all over the body everywhere. So this is how really disease, let this not scare you, but chocolate cyst are not simple cyst, okay? Chocolates are serious. It's loaded with iron and old blood. It pours into the pelvis. It disseminates all the way in pelvis also it goes up. So I want to end my presentation here. I want to thank my associate, Dr. Chu. She is here, all my staff in the office and of found people who have dedicated and working with us to make this conference happening. I wish you best. Thank you very much for your time. Yeah.
