Orthopaedic surgeon and the originator of the Salamehfix / SLDF hinged arc external fixator, a three-arc external frame designed to lengthen a limb and correct an axial deviation in the same distraction. He qualified in medicine at the First Medical Institute in Saint Petersburg (1983), completed a general surgery and traumatology residency, and then a doctoral fellowship in external fixation for deformity, pseudarthrosis and lengthening at CITO in Moscow (1987–1991) — the Soviet institute at the centre of the external-fixation tradition Ilizarov came from. He developed his own system in Syria and has operated with it since 2000; his centre is registered in Tartous, and since the war he has also worked in Frankfurt am Main with Dr. Michael Schmidt of the OUZ Orthopädisches Zentrum, his co-author. In 2025 he published the first full account of the system in International Orthopaedics: 1,103 lower-limb reconstructions performed between 2000 and 2024, of which 640 combined lengthening with deformity correction and 193 were stature lengthening. He chaired a session at the 16th European SICOT Trainees' Meeting in 2009 and is an active member of SICOT, ASAMI International and EPOS.
Affiliation
Salamehfix Limb Lengthening & Reconstruction Center — Prof. Ghassan SalamehVerified profiles
Editorial note. He publishes and is introduced as Prof. Dr. Ghassan Salameh, MD, PhD. The credentials we can source directly are the 1983 medical degree from the First Medical Institute, Saint Petersburg, and the 1987–1991 doctoral fellowship in external fixation at CITO, Moscow, both from his own published CV; his 2025 paper lists his affiliation as the Salamehfix Limb Lengthening Center, Tartous, Syria, and SICOT programmes list him from Damascus and later Tartous. No university chair is named on any source we found, so we describe the training we can verify rather than attaching the title to an institution. His indexed research record is exactly one paper (International Orthopaedics 2025) — describe him as the originator of a device with a large personal series, never as a prolific author. That article is subscription-only (Springer Nature licence, no CC-BY): summarise and cite, never reproduce the text or figures.