Building a Career Around Global Jaw Surgery With Dr. Shahid Aziz | Down Fracture Podcast

<p>In this episode, Dr. Bobek and Dr. Wasson are joined by Dr. Shahid Aziz, an academic oral and maxillofacial surgeon in New Jersey. Dr. Aziz spent twenty years on full-time faculty at Rutgers and now leads the development of an oral surgery department and training program at Hackensack Meridian Health. He trained at Harvard and at Columbia under Dr. Steven Roser, performs over 200 orthognathic cases a year, and founded Smile Bangladesh in 2005, a nonprofit that has now run 34 cleft and orthognathic surgical missions to Bangladesh. </p><p><br></p><p>The conversation covers how the organization was built and funded, what it takes to make room for that work inside a surgical career, and what mission surgery has taught him about how he practices at home.</p><p><br></p><p>Topics covered in this episode:</p><p>- How Smile Bangladesh started, from family connections and a first mission of five people in January 2006</p><p>- What each mission costs, how it gets funded, and who keeps it running between trips</p><p>- The OMS Foundation scholarship that helps residents cover travel for global surgery</p><p>- Solving the logistics: in-country instrument storage, what still has to be carried in, and industry support for plates, screws, and virtual planning</p><p>- Why visas, not willingness, are the barrier to bringing Bangladeshi surgeons to train in the States</p><p>- Negotiating four to five weeks of global surgery into an employment contract rather than spending vacation on it- Choosing global surgery over becoming a board examiner, and how he thinks about that tradeoff now</p><p>- Going back to non-custom technique abroad: positional screws for a double jaw, bending plates, and wire</p><p>- Why he still has splints made and takes vertical measurements even on custom plate cases</p><p>- Residents who have never seen a freehand genioplasty or done model surgery</p><p>- Managing post-operative follow-up through local surgeons he has trained, with video calls and messaging</p><p>- Inside his orthognathic fellowship, and where the fellows have gone</p><p>- Why fewer residents choose orthognathic surgery, and how debt and reimbursement drive that</p><p>- Patients arriving with specific millimeter requests from social media, and airway complaints with negative sleep studies</p><p>- Reviewing every virtual surgical plan with the patient before signing off, and what he does when the trust is not there</p><p>- How the measure of a successful case shifted from function and