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Google before Google: Wizard of diagnosis Dr. Istvan Waldmann retiring at 92

The kind of doctor other doctors go to for advice, Waldmann escaped death in Nazi-occupied Hungary, found his way to Canada and became renowned for his ability to crack tough cases and save lives
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Described by one local physician as “Google before there was Google,” Dr. Istvan Waldmann is retiring, at the young age of 92. (Arron Pickard / Sudbury.com)

A Sudbury physician highly regarded by the medical community and by countless patients whose lives he saved has officially hung up his stethoscope at age 92.

It is difficult to imagine Dr. Istvan Waldmann won’t continue, in some way, his lifelong mission of diagnosing illnesses and conditions that baffle other doctors.

 Long-time friend and colleague Dr. Killian de Blacam has consulted with Waldmann for 15 years on cases that perplexed him. “He was Google before there was Google,” said de Blacam of the learned doctor. 
 
 Linda Hellberg, now retired, began her nursing training with Waldmann at Sudbury General Hospital and calls him “a legend in diagnosis.” 

Others describe Waldmann as a medical detective, following ‘clues’ and doggedly researching them until arriving at a conclusion about what was wrong with a patient.

Waldmann practised medicine for 67 years, largely avoiding the limelight in his almost six decades in Sudbury. He was feted last month at a small retirement party attended by a handful of people. Hellberg and de Blacam consider themselves fortunate to have been among those gathered to honour their medical mentor and friend.

Escaping the Nazis

Waldmann has led an extraordinary life, surviving almost unimaginable hardships. Born an only child in Budapest, Hungary in 1926, Waldmann was taken at age 17 by German Nazis and Hungarian collaborators to a slave labour camp in Bor, Serbia.

Son Peter Waldmann, a Toronto lawyer, recounts the details of his father’s young life. As Russian troops were approaching the camp where his father was being held, half the prisoners were loaded onto a train to Kiskiralyhegy across the border into Hungary.  There they were shot.

Waldmann was not on that first train but rather the next one. On the way to its deadly destination, it was stopped by Tito’s “Partisans”, one of the most effective resistance movements in occupied Europe. Waldmann and the other prisoners aboard were freed.

Waldmann’s father was not as fortunate. Marcell Albert Waldmann was taken to Mathausen concentration camp and died here. His mother found refuge in a safe house in Budapest operated by Raoul Wallenberg. Swedish diplomat Wallenberg saved tens of thousands of Jews in Nazi-occupied Hungary during the Holocaust by operating houses where they were protected. 

A gifted musician, Waldmann was torn between a career in music and one in medicine. He chose the latter. He graduated from medical school in Budapest in 1951 and was qualified as a specialist in internal medicine in 1953.

He remained in Budapest until the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, marrying Klara Eva Csillag before that. When the revolution occurred, he and Klara left Hungary on foot. Waldmann carried his son, who was three or four years old, in a rucksack on his back, while Klara was months pregnant with their second child. Waldmann gave his young son a mild sedative to keep the boy quiet so they wouldn’t be detected as they trudged several kilometres through fields to freedom.

The family was picked up by bus in Austria, where they were supported by some “benevolent, well-to-do families,” said Waldmann. He applied to be accepted as a refugee in several western democracies, “and it was Canada who accepted me.” The family travelled aboard a Portuguese vessel from Europe to the St. Lawrence Seaway and eventually to Toronto.

Another benevolent family supported the Waldmanns as they stayed in a hotel for a few days. The couple’s daughter, Eva, was born in Toronto.

Welcome to Canada

Waldmann applied to become an intern resident in Toronto, but those positions were already filled by other Hungarian refugees. He was offered a job as an orderly at Mount Sinai Hospital and accepted it. One day he listened in as doctors were making their rounds, overhearing them reading the results of electrocardiograms.

Waldmann recalls he was standing to the side with his broom when a Dr. Green, an internist and chief of medicine at Mount Sinai, glanced at him. “I didn’t open my mouth,” said Waldmann. Green looked over at the orderly and said, “He will make more money than I will.”

Said Waldmann of the encounter, “I was surprised because I hardly had anything.”

As he swept and mopped floors at Mount Sinai, Dr. Brent Hazelwood, who was chief of medical services for Inco in Sudbury, heard about the young Hungarian medical graduate who wanted to start his medical career in Canada.

Hazelwood travelled to Toronto to interview Waldmann, who moved his family to Sudbury. He soon was doing an internship in internal medicine under the supervision of Dr. Jack Sturtridge at Sudbury General Hospital. He worked there two years, then moved back to Toronto for two years where he was an intern-resident for another two years at Sunnybrook Hospital.

De Blacam said it didn’t take long for Sturtridge to recognize “the quick medical mind and easy diagnostic acumen” of Waldmann.

The wizard of diagnosis

Waldmann had a special interest in cardiology and electrocardiography. In an interview at his Lo-Ellen area home, Waldmann recalled he was the only doctor qualified to interpret ECGs in Sudbury at one time, so he read them all. 
 
 The former medical director at Sudbury General Hospital was often called upon by doctors for consultations. After examining a patient and poring over medical books, Waldmann would go home and continue his research, literally losing sleep at times as he sought answers.
 
Once, when trying to diagnose a particularly difficult case, Waldmann’s 14-year-old daughter Eva was reading a medical text book and found the answer to that mystery in the 1928 volume.

Waldmann pored over text books, medical books and scholarly magazines such as the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine to find answers to patients’ problems.

Back when people were still calling it the “information superhighway,” Waldmann “took to the Internet,” using it to access the latest medical information, said de Blacam.

Waldmann has earned more than 1,050 credits from the New England Journal of Medicine for courses over the years, one as recently as last month. The shelves in his office are loaded with copies of the tests he took throughout his career.

De Blacam calls his friend’s medical achievements in Sudbury “enormous.” De Blacam, originally from Ireland, said he witnessed “countless cures that, without him (Waldmann), we would not have been able to achieve. He has made a real difference in (patients’) lives.”

When Waldmann was chief of medicine in the medical department at Sudbury General Hospital for 15 years, he also worked at MDS Labs reading ECGs. There were few cardiologists and no neurologists in Sudbury at that time, so many patients had to be referred to Toronto. Waldmann and others established an intensive care unit and a coronary unit at Sudbury Memorial Hospital where he taught nurses the lifesaving procedure of defibrillation, as well as how to read ECGs.

Doctors were “absolutely stunned” when a nurse (named Susan Beaudry) defibrillated a patient in front of them, said Waldmann.

He also operated a practice in downtown Sudbury until 2003, when his wife died. Klara Waldmann was also widely known in Sudbury. A general physician, she worked at the former Sudbury Algoma Hospital treating adults with addictions.

After closing his private practice, Waldmann continued to consult on difficult cases including de Blacam’s. The elder doctor would be called in to examine and assess patients, and try to determine what was wrong with them.

“And I have made such diagnoses several times,” said Waldmann, understating the significance of his expertise.

Saving lives

Waldmann credits his training in internal medicine for his diagnosing skills because his studies included the fields of cardiology, lung disease, neurology and other branches of medicine.

When asked if any patients stand out in his long career, he answered quickly, “Yes there is.”

He consulted with two groups, general practitioners and psychiatrists, who had patients with diseases they could not identify.

“I managed to diagnose them, then treat them and save their lives,” he said.

In one instance, he diagnosed a young man who was desperately ill, extremely weak, “vomiting his head off,” and failing by the day. He eventually diagnosed the young man with Addison’s disease, an uncommon disorder that occurs when the body doesn't produce enough of certain hormones. Treatment involves taking hormones to replace missing ones. The late U.S. President John F. Kennedy famously suffered from Addison’s disease.

Waldmann proudly shows guests a pair of white porcelain doves made and engraved by the young man whose life he saved around 1980. He later diagnosed a young woman with the same disease. She was near death but Waldmann “restored her” and presented her case to doctors on medical rounds so they could learn from it.

Finally time to retire

Waldmann admits it was exciting to get to the bottom of a patient’s illness and start them on their way to wellness.

Gaunt and frail physically, but with a razor-sharp mind, Waldmann will spend retirement playing violin with a couple of friends who formed a chamber orchestra and play every week. In his younger days, he played with the Sudbury Symphony Orchestra in the first violin section, most notably at the symphony’s annual performance of Handel’s Messiah.

He will still continue his passion for finding and collecting art, and take more online courses (from the New England Journal of Medicine of course).

Said Waldmann without a touch of ego about the many courses he has passed:  “I did that just for my own entertainment as you would do crossword puzzles.”

He will spend retirement enjoying his art collection and the dozens of books on art he has amassed, listening and playing the classical music he loves, and visiting with friends made during his extraordinary career in Sudbury.

No doubt, he will field the occasional question from doctors stymied by the symptoms with which their patients are presenting.

De Blacam credits his friend’s “infectious enthusiasm for the art of medicine” as part of his success in diagnosis. Waldmann has been practising evidence-based medicine since before the term became “fashionable,” said de Blacam.

 “I have told many trainee physicians and medical students that there is nothing written about (Waldmann’s) signature that is not reading,” said de Blacam.

Carol Mulligan is an award-winning reporter and one of Greater Sudbury’s most experienced journalists.


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