Meet Dr. Burton J. Katzen
When Dr. Burton J. Katzen walks through TUSPM’s alumni office hallway, he walks to the end. There hangs his class picture, so far over that by his judgement, come next year he’ll be out the window if they keep hanging pictures. Dr. Katzen is one of those first generation podiatrists who got his start in the early years of PCPM’s founding. “I knew I was in the right place as soon as I got there,” he says. “I knew then that that’s what I wanted to do.” A former president of this alumni association, his career has touched the lives of countless podiatrists and patients alike, and he’s not slowing down.
Dr. Katzen arrived at The PCPM in 1967 after first becoming interested in the profession while spending a summer working for Charles Turnchin, a former APA president who treated the likes of President Lyndon B. Johnson and was a great early promoter of the profession. Dr. Katzen didn’t need much convincing though, as he quickly recognized the value in the array of conditions podiatrists treat. From surgical, to diabetic, to athletic patients, “you’re not seeing the same type of patient after patient on a daily basis.” This continued to prove true in his own private practice that he’s built since 1972.
From the longest serving president of the Academy of Minimally Invasive Foot and Ankle Surgery to an extensive lecturing and publication history, Dr. Katzen’s career accomplishments are too many to touch on in this piece, but perhaps one of his most impactful achievements is his development of a minimally invasive hallux valgus procedure. About seven years ago, Dr. Katzen utilized knowledge from multiple mentors over the years to develop this new minimally invasive technique. Today, it is a widely used procedure by many minimally invasive foot surgeons throughout the country. Dr. Katzen believes that this type of procedure is the wave of the future, as it’s dominated in almost all other surgical medical specialties, and part of the hope behind his establishing of the Dr. Burton J. Katzen and Wendy S. Katzen scholarship at TUSPM is that it might pay for senior graduates to attend a seminar on the subject. Dr. Katzen is also hopeful it will become part of undergraduate and residency programs in the future.
As for Dr. Katzen’s future, he has no plans for it to exclude podiatry anytime soon. At 74 years old, he still looks forward to going into the office every day. “I thank God I stayed healthy, podiatry has given me a tremendous life.” This life includes a marriage of 49 years, a son and a daughter, the latter of which is a Temple Law School graduate, and five granddaughters. After retiring from 18 years of coaching baseball, Dr. Katzen now spends much of his free time enjoying frequent games of competitive tennis and pickleball.
A large supporter of TUSPM’s golf outing on September 22d, Burton tips his cap to current alumni President Dr. Vekkos and all those involved in the creation of an event that a past president knows the notorious difficulty of successfully organizing. The outing is in good hands with their involvement, as is the state of podiatry with Dr. Katzen’s.