About

Professor Arjun Dev Bhatta, MD, PhD, DSc, FICS was born on January 25, 1946 in Palpa. He attended various schools in Baitadi, Doti, and Kathmandu before taking the S.L.C. and subsequently I.Sc.

Dr. Bhatta graduated, with honors, from Kharkov Medical Institute in USSR (now Ukraine) in 1970. During the medical school he was involved in many activities, including science club and surgical interest groups, and regularly performed extracurricular night shifts. His zeal and ability did not go unnoticed. Dr. Bhatta successfully performed his first appendectomy as a 3rd year medical student, assisted by the chief of surgery. He was among the first international students in the USSR to cap off his Master of Surgery with a Ph.D., which he completed in 1974.

Dr. Bhatta returned to Nepal in 1974 and joined the government service at the Jaleshwar-Janakpur anchal hospital. The hospital lacked most of the things that are now considered to be the sine qua non for day-to-day practice – even the blood grouping/transfusion facilities. Dr. Bhatta was the first and only surgeon in the region, but by the time he was leaving, thousands of patients had benefitted from hydrocelectomies, hernia repairs, bladder stone removals, vaginal hysterectomies, transabdominal hysterectomies, prostatectomies, ureteropyelolithotomies, cholecystectomies, c-sections, nailing and plating of the femur, tibia, and radius, and other surgeries. The positive impact of his hard work and his dedication to patients was very well-regarded by locals and probably best exemplified, when the prominent personality, Mahant of Matihani, elected to entrust his prostatectomy to be done by Dr. Bhatta.

In 1978 Dr. Bhatta moved to USSR and worked under the tutelage of arguably the most famous Soviet urologist of his time, N.A. Lopatkin, M.D., Ph.D., D.Sc., as a research scholar and clinician. In 1984 Dr. Bhatta became the first doctor from a non-socialist country to be awarded Doctor of Science (D.Sc.). This degree, also known as Doktor nauk or Habilitation, is the highest postdoctoral degree conferred in the numerous non-English speaking countries and is a requisite for a professorship.

In 1984 upon completion of D.Sc. in urology Dr. Bhatta joined Bir Hospital as a surgical registrar. Between 1987 and 1990 he was deputed to the Family Planning Association of Nepal as the medical director. There he trained doctors on techniques such as vasectomy, vas recanalization, Norplant insertion, IUCD, minilap, and others, and published books on natural family planning, STD, and AIDS. During this time, he also superspecialized in male infertility at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, USA. In 1987 Dr. Bhatta received the Science Writer Award, a joint award by Royal Nepal Academy of Science and Technology (RONAST) and International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Canada, for popularizing science and technology among the general masses through medium of publication. Dr. Bhatta says, “It is extremely important to share medical information with laypeople in the language they understand.”

From 1990 to 1995 Dr. Bhatta worked as a consultant surgeon and urologist at the National Academy of Medical Sciences/Bir hospital. In 1995 he became the head of the urology unit. During his time as the head of urology Dr. Bhatta regularly performed, among other, sophisticated urological operations done only at a handful of institutions around the world, such as orthotopic neobladder reconstruction in male and female bladder cancer patients. In 2004 Dr. Bhatta completed a fellowship in renal transplantation at the Ramathibodi Hospital in Bangkok, Thailand and subsequently established the kidney transplant program at NAMS. Dr. Bhatta then performed the first renal transplant at a government hospital in Nepal. As a professor of NAMS Dr. Bhatta conducted surgical and urological classes for M.S. residents. In 1997 he was elected Fellow of the International College of Surgeons (FICS) in Urological Surgery and later served as the Vice President of FICS in Nepal. In 2003 Dr. Bhatta supervised, trained, and monitored College of Physicians and Surgeons of Pakistan FCPS trainees in urology. Dr. Bhatta retired as Professor of Urology and Head of Urology Unit in 2006.

After a brief hiatus during which Dr. Bhatta traveled around the world with his wife, he returned to Nepal in 2007. He continues taking care of urological patients in Medicare National Hospital and Research Centre, Ltd., which he founded with his close friends in 1992. He specializes in laser and conventional endourology, prostate (the biggest prostate he operated on weighed 316 grams), bladder and urinary stone surgery, male infertility treatment (subinguinal varicocelectomy and recanalization of vas), female urinary incontinence (SUI TOT with or without cysto-rectocele repair), and urogynecology. His most memorable recent operation was on a 102-year-old father of one of the Medicare doctors. The patient required 5 operations: circumcision (phimosis), TURBT (repeatedly bleeding papillary bladder mass), TURP (significant BOO), and two herniotomies (extremely large both right and left inguinal hernias) followed by their mesh repair. Surgeries were all successfully completed in one setting, and the patient was discharged without catheter in good condition.

In his spare time Dr. Bhatta likes writing prose and poetry. One of the two books he is about to publish is his collection of poems written over the years and based on his life. He has authored a total of six books and over 150 articles in Nepalese, English, and Russian. Dr. Bhatta is an avid news reader and loves having a good chat with his family and friends.