Aroldo Macareño Stelling is an orthopedic traumatologist based in Venezuela with a sub-specialty in shoulder, knee, and hip joint surgery, minimally invasive surgery, and joint replacements.
He is also the coordinator and teacher of the ArtroMetro Foundation as well as the academic coordinator of the traumatology postgraduate at the hospital Ana Francisca Perez de Leon 2, performs his private work in the Policlinica Metropolitana in Caracas.
Aroldo, who is the son of a doctor, always wanted to follow his father’s footsteps and become a doctor, and from an early age, he imagined himself performing surgeries. About this, he says:
“Since I was a child, I had the illusion of being a doctor. I even operated on grapes and extracted their seeds. I was always very curious about anatomy. I think I always had an instinct of wanting to heal and help others, and being the son of a doctor, fortunately, I had the example and the vocation. I was born to be a surgeon and if you do what you like, you will never work a single day of your life.” Aroldo shares.
During his training process as a trauma specialist, Aroldo, while still a resident, took multiple international courses seeking to sub-specialize in surgery. In particular, he took more than 13 courses at the Clemi Latin American Center for Research and Minimally Invasive Surgery.
Upon graduating as a specialist, Aroldo then began a fellowship in arthroscopic surgery at the hospital San Juan de Dios under the tutelage of Dr. Juan Bautista Zambrano, and then did another fellowship in high-energy fractures at the University of Miami at the Ryder Trauma Center where he achieved the status of national faculty AO in Venezuela.
Even with the knowledge and experiences acquired, Aroldo’s desire to learn did not cease and he continued with the training and surgical courses in Chicago at the AANA (The Arthroscopy Association of North America).
There, he was invited several times as an instructor and master faculty, thus being able to share, teach and represent his native Venezuela as the only Latin American in these prestigious institutes.
Aroldo considers it is very important to invest in academic preparation of the medical profession, no matter what the specialty is. To do this, it is crucial to be perseverant and not give up.
“The most difficult thing is not to lose perseverance and faith in yourself. To never give up. To have a good academic formation. To have a project and also to be able to see yourself in the future with what you have achieved. Not to despair or lose the horizon and finally, the most important thing is to have a vocation and to know how to channel it to your specialty.” Aroldo advises.
Aroldo manages to stand out from other doctors for various reasons such as his academic training, which is continuous at the highest level and difficult to match. On the other hand, he considers that his real competition is himself.
Another differentiating aspect to a great extent is his treatment of the patient who comes to his consultations. Aroldo provides humane, emotional, and understanding care and treatment.
“The treatment I give them is unique. I break that uncomfortable barrier and false superiority that some specialists have.” Aroldo says.
In that continuous preparation, Aroldo is currently doing a Master of the knee that ends in November 2023. He also seeks to continue providing his patients with the best and most updated treatment with accurate criteria and surgical skill.
Moreover, he will continue to train specialists around him and is working to launch a project to perform regenerative medicine of cartilage through chondrichthyan cultures–the most current is cartilage regeneration.
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