Grigory Sarkisovich Grigoryants (Armenian: Գրիգոր Սարգիսի Գրիգորյանց; Russian: Григорий Саркисович Григорьянц;Cyrillic Uzbek: Григорий Саркисович Григорьянц) (August 10, 1919 – January 3, 1982) was a Soviet surgeon, an innovator and State recognized Doctor Emeritus of the Uzbek SSRThis information was translated from the official, Soviet Government issued honorary documents belonging to Surgeon G.S. Grigoryants. He is best known for revolutionizing and developing medical surgical services in the Namangan Region.
Early life Grigoryants was born in the town of Martuni, Republic of Artsakh, to the Armenian parents. His father, Sarkis, who was a young migrant worker in the city of Andizhan, Uzbekistan, died two months before Grigory's birth. Grigory's mother, Eghineh (or Elena), relocated the family from their home in Gishi to the city of Namangan, Uzbekistan, where she had relatives. Elena and her two small children moved into a tiny upstairs room located in the same building as their relatives.
In Namangan, Elena provided for her family by working as a Washerwoman, cleaning homes and scrubbing floors. When they were not in school, little Grisha and his older sister Zhenya helped their mother out with her work.
At age 10, Grigoryants was diagnosed with an inborn heart defect and a Cardiac dysrhythmia. Elena was warned by the observing physician that the boy would not live long.
Grigoryants proved to be a quick learner. Aside from his native Armenian, the boy quickly became proficient in Russian and Uzbek.
Grigoryants made friends easily. His classmates and childhood comrades remembered the times the future doctor protected school kids from the bullies, pulled on girls' hair and disrupted boring classes by tossing rags on the classroom chandeliers.
After graduating from a standard Soviet middle school, Grigoryants briefly volunteered as a chaperone and translator for the Uzbek only speaking youth aspiring to be admitted into Samarkand Medical School (where teaching was in Russian).
During one of the sessions, Grigory, who was patiently sitting in the lobby waiting for his group to finish their exams so that he could escort them back to Namangan, a medical school professor advised Grigory to consider becoming a doctor himself. Grigory heeded the advice and in 1937, he was accepted into the Samarkand Medical Institute.
During the summers of 1940 and 1941, Grigoryants became director of the HealthCare Providers' Division within the Namangan Regional Health Department.Personal archives of G.S. Grigoryants. Translated into Russian
At the onset of the Great Patriotic War, Grigoryants was rejected for the draft into a Soviet Army due to his eye defect.
In December 1941, Grigoryants graduated from Samarkand Medical Institute a fully qualified doctor.
The war years On January 5, 1942, during the difficult times of World War II, Grigory started his job as the head of the Regional Health Department of Turakurgan (one of the Districts of Uzbekistan located within the Namangan Province). Grigory, who held one of the top positions in his field, humbly took a daily route through the railroad tracks – that connected the train stations of the Namangan and Turakurgan cities – on foot.
One year later, in February 1943, his governing duties expended as he became the head of the Namangan Province's Central Health Department. At the same time, Grigoryants also served as the Medical Superintendent and Head Physician of the regional evacuation hospital #4567, one of the 113 war hospitals set up in the Uzbek Republic during World War II. At that time, Uzbekistan, as other Central Asian Soviet Republics, served as the U.S.S.R's Rear (military) base.Меликулов. Р. Развитие культуры Узбекистана в годы Великой Отечественной войны (1941-1945). Автореферат. Ташкент, 1963.с.10-14.
Grigoryants's evac. hospital was housed on site of Namangan's school #34, near the train station from where the wounded Soviet soldiers and other military personnel (transported straight from the battle fields) were rushed to the evacuation hospital facilities. Working around the clock, Grigoryants's medical team – which was experiencing shortage in qualified medical specialists, as well as in medical materials' supply – had to economize by reusing the thoroughly washed gauze bandages on numerous patients.
Shortage of surgeons in the Namangan Province during the war led Grigoryants to his calling. In 1942, literally in clinical emergency settings, Grigoryants started his surgical training under the mentorship of Xenia Sergeevna Kisselyova, a prominent surgeon from Moscow, who was stationed in Namangan as the result of the Great Soviet World War II Mobilization and Evacuation to Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic.Шамуратова М. Творческое сотрудничество интеллигенции Узбекистана с эвакуированными в республику представителями науки и культуры (1941-1945). Dr. Kisselyova later remembered that when she first saw a young tall doctor, she took notice of his hands. "He (Grigoryants) had surgeon's hands. Being in charge, he was doing everything at the hospital, from medical to administrative services. I told him to start operating." From that moment, Grigoryants's fate was sealed. Surgeon Grigoryants and Surgeon Kisselyova, the latter returned to Moscow after the war, had developed and maintained a strong professional bond and a lifelong friendship.
For his outstanding work as a doctor during the war time, Grigoryants was awarded an official Governmental Gratitude Letter and the Medal "For the Victory over Germany in the Great Patriotic War 1941–1945".
In 1944 Grigoryants was appointed director of Namangan's Feldsher-Obstetrician School Of Medicine (eventually the school was developed into an accredited Medical College). One of his best students in school recollected that Grigoryants's pupils, especially ladies, "greatly adored young Grigoryants",http://truefriends.ucoz.ru/forum/15-418-1.Translated from the Russian language the man who always managed to look at any situation with a sharp sense of humor.
Grigoryants's duties at school already coincided with his job as a surgeon in Namangan's municipal hospital.
Post-war professional life In February 1950, Grigoryants became the Head Surgeon of Namangan's Regional Health Department. Concurrently, Grigoryants also supervised the Namangan's Regional Hospital's surgical department. After ten years of service, in February 1960, Grigoryants was appointed head surgeon of the Namanagan City's Regional Hospital's surgical wing.
Grigoryants's scope of surgical practice was boundless. The doctor performed, with equal success, all types of surgeries ranging from gynecological procedures and open heart operation to Neurosurgery. Feeling personally responsible for every operation administered at his facilities, Grigoryants perfected his skills even in the art of plastic surgery by, successfully, reconstructing the skin tissues of the burn victims.
In July 1960, eager to learn plastic surgery, Grigoryants traveled to Mariánské Lázně and Prague, where he was invited to participate in the First International Plastic Surgery Symposium.
Inspired by the Health Care System he had observed, in Czechoslovakia and Russia ( where he participated in the First Conference of Traumatologists in Moscow, in September 1963), Doctor Grigoryants returned to Uzbekistan with a goal to remodel the Regional Hospital's surgical department.
The architectural design, although in some parts created by Grigoryants himself, was to be modeled after the best European, mostly Moscow-based hospitals. The construction process was Grigoryants's love child which "he personally agonized over, approved, persuaded and the construction was administered under his rigorous control."http://namangan.ucoz.ru/forum/4-38-105. Translated from the Russian language On numerous occasions, Grigoryants had to fly to a Soviet capital to get the design blueprints for the surgical clinic approved.
"Grigoryants was a colossal talent!" remembered one of the people who lived in Namangan at that time. "What an Individual he was! I can only imagine what armor he needed in order to perforate the routine of those years! And he perforated it."
After a long construction process – during which Grigoryants had to overcome the red tape obstacles – a brand new surgical department was unveiled to the public. Stocked with the best available technological, medical equipment to date ordered by Grigoryants directly from Moscow, the brand new two-story complex was surrounded by tastefully decorated fruit gardens, three level statue-bounding cascade fountains and beautiful wide alleys filled with colorful flowers and shades from the various types of trees.
The entire idea behind Grigoryants's vision was to make the patients and general visitors feel joyful and comfortable on the hospital premises. The new outfits were ordered for the doctors and the nurses. The visitors had to abide by the traditional rule of wearing snowy white hospital gowns inside the complex.
The overall neat appearance of the medical staff (who, according to one of the patients "admired and worshiped" their strict Head Surgeon), as well as their professionalism had rightfully placed Grigoryants's surgical headquarters in the ranks of one of the best in the Nation. One of the observers describes the surgical complex facilities of that time as the state of "cleanliness, order, even if one really wanted to find a spot of dirt, one wouldn't be able to."
During the routine daily rounds around the clinic, Grigoryants spoke to each hospitalized individual and held every member of medical personnel accountable for the slightest disobedience towards an established protocol of giving the best medical care to all patients.
Additionally, at his surgical facilities, Grigoryants held an ongoing all-regional SURGICAL METHODICAL TRAINING for the young medical students. It was a unique and the only program in the Republic at the time where the surgeons could get a hands on experience from one of the best in the field. Among the many talented surgeons of Uzbekistan mentored by Grigory Sarkisovich were M.A. Ahadov (in his later life – a deputy of the Uzbekistan's Supreme Council), B.C. Puck, A.A. Alinazarov, M.A. Abdulaev and others.
The improved health care system was so successful that in 1974, the World Health Organization visited Namangan's Regional Hospital and Grigoryants's famed department of surgery.
In August 1979, Grigoryants semiretired to become the main consultant at the Regional Hospital # 2.
Academic work and research Grigoryants built a lever-operated gurney which made it easier for staff to lift the patients for the transport purposes. Due to post-war rehabilitation and slow economic growth in remote areas of the Soviet Union at the time, such rudimentary necessities were not yet in use in Namangan or its surrounding provincial areas at a time.
Grigoryants designed the operative technique of closure of the femoral hernia defect. Grigoryants is also credited with developing a method of musculo-aponeurotic surgical suture on the Abdominal cavity
Some of Grigoryants's research included work on surgical methods used in repairing damaged anterior abdominal wall hernias (also known as ventral hernias)Medical Journal of Uzbekistan. "Four cases of strangulated internal abdominal hernias" by G.S. Grigoryants and on the topic of radiological impairment the body sustains from the incorrect use of the x-ray machines.Medical Journal of Uzbekistan. "On Question Of Impairment from Radiation" by G. S. Grigoryants (Issue #12, Tashkent 1958)