WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. – John Baillie, M.D., professor of medicine and director of the Hepatobiliary and Pancreatic Disorders Center at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center, is one of two U.S.-based gastroenterologists invited to participate in Syrian Digestive Disease Week (DDW) in Damascus, Syria.
During his four-day visit to Damascus earlier this year, Baillie was among nearly 1,000 gastroenterologists, gastroenterology trainees and GI nurses from Europe, the Middle East, the Gulf States, India and Pakistan in attendance.
Baillie participated in a day of “live” endoscopy procedures at Al-Assad University Hospital, demonstrating procedures ranging from removal of large colon polyps during colonoscopy and stenting of complex bile duct strictures encountered during endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography (ERCP).
Prior to joining Wake Forest Baptist in 2005, Baillie served as professor of medicine and director of the biliary service at Duke University Medical Center in Durham.
Baillie graduated with honors from Glasgow University Medical School in Scotland. He completed his internships in medicine and surgery at the Royal and Victoria Infirmary in Glasgow. He completed his fellowship in gastroenterology at the University of Minnesota in 1984. Baillie worked in London before joining Duke in 1988.
Baillie is a fellow of the American Society of Gastrointestinal Endoscopy and the American College of Gastroenterology. He has authored more than 400 papers, book chapters and meeting abstracts, and is first author or co-author of six textbooks.
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Media Relations Contacts: Kristin Butler, kbutler@wfubmc.edu, 336-716-3464; Jonnie Rohrer, jrohrer@wfubmc.edu or Bonnie Davis, bdavis@wfubmc.edu
Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center (www.wfubmc.edu) is an academic health system comprised of North Carolina Baptist Hospital, Brenner Children’s Hospital, Wake Forest University Physicians, and Wake Forest University Health Sciences, which operates the university’s School of Medicine and Piedmont Triad Research Park. The system comprises 1,154 acute care, rehabilitation and long-term care beds and has been ranked as one of “America’s Best Hospitals” by U.S. News & World Report since 1993. Wake Forest Baptist is ranked 32nd in the nation by America’s Top Doctors for the number of its doctors considered best by their peers. The institution ranks in the top third in funding by the National Institutes of Health and fourth in the Southeast in revenues from its licensed intellectual property.