Surgeon as Artist - My Philosophy
Dr. Edward Szachowicz
Artist's Statement - "After over 25 years in practice as a Facial Plastic Surgeon, I want to reflect on my life-long learning to perfect the art and skill of being a sculptor to the human face.
I believe that beauty is intrinsic in every human and is healing for all. Beauty brings us in contact with all our levels of being - physical, mental, emotional and spiritual. I am touched when my office is often the first place to which people reach out in response to serious change in their lives. I believe that we reflect the respect we have that even small changes on the outside allow for so much healing and acceptance on the inside.
So, every day, I honor those people who trust their face to me as their facial plastic surgeon. With this sacred trust, I try to align myself with offerings of treatments and procedures that are aesthetic and yield safe and consistent results.
As a surgeon and artist for the face, I am led by nuance and subtlety. Inspired by diversity of form. I seek states of harmony, balance and proportion. I am grateful to all the teaching that my patients have so generously offered to me over these years, from which I have learned, so that I can give back to them every day, as fully as I am able."
- E.H. Szachowcz, MD, PhD
Meet the Doctor: Edward Szachowicz (Sack-o-which)
Double Board-certified:
- Board Certified, American Board of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery
- Board Certified, American Board of Otolaryngology and Head& Neck Surgery
Society Memberships and Degrees:
- Fellow, American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery
- Diplomate, American Board of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery
- Fellow of the American College of Surgeons (FACS)
- Alumnus, University of Minnesota, Dept. of Otolaryngology (Residency and PhD)
- Alumnus, University of Illinois, Abraham Lincoln School of Medicine (MD), Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Society
- Alumnus, Northwestern University - Evanston, IL
Pro Bono Work:
- National Health Service, Marshall Islands, South Pacific
- American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery "Face-to Face" Mission, Zagreb, Croatia
- American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, Domestic Violence Project
Teaching :
- Numerous national scientific sessions given to the American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, American Academy of Dermatology, American Academy of Laser Medicine & Surgery, and the Northstar Dental Association
Dr. Szachowicz - Up Close and Personal
Dr. Szachowicz's grandparents emigrated from Poland as a young couple at the turn of the century, from the city of Lodz. Dr. Edward Szachowicz carries his grandfather's name, Edward Henry, as was the tradition of the time. His grandfather was the second-born, and was not in line to inherit the family estate, so he came to the United States. The Polish people pronounce Szachowicz as Sha-ho-vich, while the Americanized version is Sack-o-which.
The lust for learning started early with Dr. Szachowicz, shown here in his first graduation photograph. It was hard in 1959 to know that Dr. Szachowicz's education would span another 27 years! Even after all this schooling, Dr. Szachowicz says, "Every fall I still get a kind of yearning that I should be back in school, smelling the scent of new textbooks."
Here Dr. Szachowicz is shown graduating from the University of Illinois College of Medicine, in the Alpha Omega Aloha Honor Society, a prestigious academic award for excellence in medicine. His under-graduate Bachelor of Arts was earned at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. Dr. Szachowicz then joined the MD-PhD program at the University of Minnesota in the Department of Otolaryngology. This is a time of his life when the degrees kept on coming.
After completing the five-year-long MD-PhD program at the University of Minnesota, Dr. Szachowicz was offered a dual faculty position at the University of Minnesota, Department of Otolaryngology, with an appointment as a trauma surgeon at the then St. Paul-Ramsey Hospital (now Regions Hospital in St. Paul, MN). He then went on a year-long fellowship in Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, and is shown here with his fellowship certificate at his final graduation. He was later double-boarded as he became a diplomate of the American Board of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery.
Pro Bono Activities: Giving Back
In the spring of 1993, Dr. Szachowicz donated much-needed surgical services in the capital of Croatia, the city of Zagreb. There, as part of the “Face-to-Face” outreach of the American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, Dr. Szachowicz served on an international faculty of academic surgeons. This educational mission was funded by the Lira Foundation, a non-profit philanthropic Croatian group. Overwhelmed by the severity and volume of war injuries from the Balkan War, Croatian doctors needed an intensive educational update on the treatment of facial trauma. In just two weeks, nine American and Swiss surgeons performed over 60 teaching surgical cases. A portion of Dr. Szachowicz's casework was at the children's hospital in Zagreb.
In 1989, Dr. Szachowicz donated his services to the people of the Marshall Islands, a chain of atolls in the Pacific, midway between Hawaii and Guam. The Marshall Islands are a territory of the United States because the USA used the island atolls as testing sites for the newly developed atomic bomb. Many of the islanders and their descendants have had tumors and other after-effects of that exposure to radiation.
The National Health Service (a department of the US government) built and partially staffs the hospital facility on the tiny island of Majuro. Here, Dr. Szachowicz examines a young boy with a mass growing in his right cheek.
Dr. Szachowicz has only one child, Asher, age 17.
Asher is currently enrolled at St. Paul Academy in St. Paul, MN. He is interested in sailing, fencing, and anything electronic. He is very interested in studying computer science, hoping to achieve a combined degree also in psychology.
