Abstract
Dr. Yolanda Oertel was born in Lima, Peru, received her medical degree from the Cayetano Heredia in Lima in 1964, and emigrated to the United States in 1966. After completion of a postdoctoral fellowship at the National Institutes of Health (1966–68), she completed a pathology residency in 1972 at George Washington University (GWU), and joined the teaching faculty in pathology first as an instructor, then in 1975 as assistant professor, associate professor in 1978, and full professor in 1984. After over 20 years at GWU, she moved to the MedStar Washington Hospital Center (MWHC) establishing a new and vibrant division of cytopathology. Dr. Oertel's husband, Dr. James E. Oertel, who predeceased her in 2013, had been in his own right an internationally acknowledged expert in endocrine pathology and served as the director of endocrine pathology at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (AFIP) at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, DC. Since 1981, Yolanda was an official consultant in cytology to the AFIP and it was at Walter Reed where we first met her, and where we coauthored our first publication with her in 1988.
Yolanda was a longtime member of the American Thyroid Association, and frequently appeared on programs at the annual meeting on aspects of thyroid fine needle aspiration (FNA). Although widely acknowledged for her expertise in thyroid cytopathology, Yolanda authored one of the early definitive textbooks on FNA of the breast. She published scores of articles on both technical and practical aspects of FNA for diagnosis and management and was a strong proponent and advocate for a multidisciplinary approach to thyroid cancer management. Through her publications and frequent teaching workshops, she brought endocrinologists into their first awareness of the utility of FNA of thyroid nodules for the early diagnosis of thyroid malignancies. Because of her extraordinary skill at diagnosis, she earned the nickname of “One Cell Oertel.” Dr. Oertel was a recognized pioneer in the field and early in her career had said “I am committed to enhancing and facilitating the use of FNA because I believe its full potential has not been realized.” She trained innumerable residents and fellows in cytopathology both at GWU and MWHC and took enormous joy in their achievements, and through her significant generosity established and endowed the first fellowship in cytopathology at MWHC-Georgetown University Hospital. She also endowed the Yolanda Oertel Interventional Cytopathologist Award of the Papanicolau Society of Cytopathology and was herself a member of the International Academy of Pathology and an honorary member of the Argentinian, Peruvian, and Columbian Societies of Cytopathology as well as the American Society of Clinical Pathology.
Having trained and associated with her colleagues, Alexander Breslau and Bill Newman at GWU, Yolanda learned and was quite fond of using Yiddish slang, particularly of off-color words. She was an avid reader of both fiction and contemporary nonfiction and before retirement was also an ardent gardener, particularly of flowers. We shared a subscription to the Washington Opera with Yolanda and James and she particularly loved listening to her favorites, Renata Tebaldi and Placido Domingo. Her great appreciation for the humanities took expression most recently in her endowment of $2.5M to the GWU School of Medicine for the Yolanda and James Oertel Professorship in the Medical Humanities intended to help incorporate a deeper understanding of the human condition and the humanities into medical education. We miss Yolanda as the consummate educator, as the towering pioneer and icon of cytopathology and thyroid FNA, as well as a warm, thoughtful, self-effacing, and humanistic friend and colleague.