Dr. Jose Pablo Velez, MD.

Dr José Pablo Vélez is the chief surgeon of the Obesity Clinic and is in charge of the Minimal Invasive Surgery Service of Fundación Valle del Lili (advanced laparoscopic surgery). He went to the medical school at the Instituto de Ciencias de la Salud (CES) in Medellín, Colombia. His residency in surgery was also in the same institution, and later on undertook a subspecialty program on advanced laparoscopic surgery and gastrointestinal endoscopy at the University of Texas in the USA. Before joining Fundación Valle del Lili, he was chief of the postgraduate program of general surgery at the Instituto de Ciencias de la Salud -CES in Medellín and was part of the group of surgeons of the SOMA Clinic in the same city. He has been teacher of surgery at the Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana in Medellín and the CES. Dr José Pablo Vélez has participated in several international and national medical courses and congresses. He had training experience in the area of bariatric surgery at the Pittsburgh Medical Center in the United States, and in Mexico. Several of his papers have been published in different medical journals in the area of laparoscopic surgery and gastrointestinal endoscopy. Dr Vélez is also member of national and international medical and scientific associations: American Society for Bariatric Surgeons (ASBS), International Federation for the Surgery of Obesity (IFSO), Society of American Gastrointestinal Endoscopic Surgeons (SAGES), Asociación Colombiana de Cirugía and Asociación Colombiana de Endoscopia Digestiva. Dr Vélez’s group has performed more than thousand two hundred bariatric surgical procedures, with the bypass surgery as the most frequently used method for the treatment of severe and morbid obesity.