After completing medical school at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland and residency at Columbia University Medical Center/New York Presbyterian Hospital’s Internal Medicine Residency in June 2017, Dr. Bazarbashi went on to pursue Gastroenterology and Hepatology and training at Brigham and Women’s Hospital/Harvard Medical School, with his fellowship in Gastroenterology & Hepatology, Bariatric Endoscopy and Advanced Endoscopy completed in July 2021. He also completed the Program in Clinical Effectiveness at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health and is board certified in Internal Medicine and Obesity Medicine. Dr. Bazarbashi’s research interest and pursuits during fellowship involved endoscopic management of gastric varices. Under the mentorship of Drs. Marvin Ryou and Christopher Thompson, he worked on a novel technique to treat bleeding gastric varices by injecting hemostatic coil and absorbable gelatin sponge, a novel alternative to cyanoacrylate, under EUS guidance. Their work on gastric varices resulted in several poster and oral presentations, awards and publications, including a presidential poster and outstanding poster presenter awards at the 2018 ACG annual conference, an oral presentation at the ACG’s North American Fellow Conference and an AGA oral presentation at DDW 2019.
More recently, his collaborative gastric variceal work has been published in Endoscopy International Open and Clinical and Translational Gastroenterology amongst other journals. Dr. Bazarbashi’s research interests and work have also included topics in bariatric endoscopy and endoscopic submucosal dissection. Over the course of training at the Brigham and Womens’ Hospital, he was involved in more than 70 abstracts accepted as oral and poster form to various national conferences and contributed to more than 35 publications. Alongside his clinical and research endeavors, Dr. Bazarbashi has been involved in teaching and leadership roles. During fellowship, he contributed to NEJM Knowledge+ Internal Medicine Question Bank (Gastroenterology) and joined the Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology (HST) Introduction to Clinical Medicine (ICM) as a preceptor for first year medical students. During the academic year of 2019-2020, Dr. Bazarbashi joined American College of Gastroenterology Case Report Journal (ACGCRJ) as an associate editor and was chosen as the editor-in-chief of the journal for the academic year of 2020-2021. Dr. Bazarbashi looks forward to the opportunity to augment the established bariatric program at Washington University, expand it as a multidisciplinary center and provide cutting edge technology in novel endobariatric procedures.
Alongside bariatric endoscopy, he hopes to continue his work and introduce endoscopic hepatology to the program, with a focus on the management patients with liver disease and includes EUS-guided gastric variceal management, portal pressure measurement and liver biopsies in collaboration with our Hepatology team to provide endoscopic diagnostic and therapeutic options for liver patients. From a research perspective, Dr. Bazabashi plans to continue clinical research in bariatric endoscopy and endoscopic Hepatology.