Astana Becomes a Global Training Ground for Thyroid Ablation
Dr. Niyaz Malayev performed the region's first thyroid radiofrequency ablation in 2021. Five years and more than 500 cases later, physicians from across the former Soviet region are traveling to Kazakhstan to learn from him.
ASTANA, Kazakhstan. The physicians arriving at the Dr. Niyaz Malayev Clinic this summer came a long way to stand in a small procedure room. They came from Moscow and Kyiv, from Tashkent and St. Petersburg, endocrine surgeons and interventional radiologists who had read the literature on thermal thyroid ablation and wanted to learn it from the man who brought it to Central Asia.
Thermal ablation of thyroid nodules has been practiced worldwide for more than two decades. It reached this region in 2021, when Dr. Malayev, an interventional radiologist at the National Scientific Medical Center in Astana, performed Central Asia’s first thyroid radiofrequency ablation. He added microwave ablation in 2023. Today more than 500 thermal thyroid ablation cases have been performed in Astana, a volume that has quietly made the Kazakh capital one of the most experienced ablation centers between Beijing and Berlin.
That experience now has an institutional home. With the support of the World Ablative Therapies Association (WATA) and the China Conference on Microwave Ablation (CCMA), Dr. Malayev’s clinic has been designated an official international training center, the first of its kind in Central Asia and the CIS. A steel plaque bearing the CCMA seal now hangs at the clinic entrance. It joins a short list of CCMA-designated training sites worldwide, alongside centers in Paris, Manila, Istanbul, and Sao Paulo.
Dr. Malayev’s standing in the field extends well beyond the region. He is among the international authors of the 2025 expert consensus on thermal ablation for benign thyroid nodules, a panel that included many of the discipline’s most recognized figures, among them Dr. Giovanni Mauri of Milan, Dr. Gregory Randolph of Harvard Medical School, and Dr. Ming-An Yu of Beijing’s China-Japan Friendship Hospital. For a physician practicing in Kazakhstan, a seat at that table is not a courtesy. It is a measure of case volume, published work, and peer regard.
The first master class convened in June 2026 and drew physicians from Russia and Ukraine. Over the course of the program, eight patients with nodules of varying sizes were treated, including complex cases: patients who had previously undergone thyroid artery embolization and patients returning after a first course of ablation. These are precisely the cases that separate a demonstration from an education. Retreatment and post-embolization anatomy demand judgment that cannot be learned from a slide deck.
The June cohort was notable for who was in it. Among the participants was Prof. Pavel Rumyantsev, one of the most cited thyroidologists in the Russian-speaking world. Prof. Rumyantsev co-authored the Russian Association of Endocrinologists’ national guidelines for thyroid nodules and differentiated thyroid cancer, and his research on recurrence risk in the Chernobyl thyroid cancer cohort was published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism. When a physician of that stature takes a place in the trainee row, it says something about where the field’s center of gravity is moving.
A second master class followed in July, drawing endocrine surgeons from Russia and Uzbekistan, among them Dr. Ilya Kim and Dr. Shakhriyor Anvarjonov. Eight ablations of benign thyroid tumors were performed during the program. The surgical background of the second cohort is telling. Across the world, the physicians most skeptical of thermal ablation have often been the surgeons whose operations it replaces. In Astana, they are the ones signing up.
The demand is not slowing. A third master class is scheduled for September, and physicians from Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan have already applied. Dr. Malayev sees the training center as the first step toward something larger: a dedicated thermal ablation academy serving a region of roughly 90 million people, one that is considered endemic for thyroid disease, with plans to extend ablation techniques to other organs. His own practice already reflects that breadth. In addition to radiofrequency and microwave ablation, he performs thyroid artery embolization, giving patients in Astana a full range of nonsurgical options that many capitals in Western Europe cannot yet match.
For decades, physicians from Central Asia traveled abroad to learn advanced techniques. In thyroid ablation, the direction of travel has reversed.
For patients, the arithmetic is simple. Every physician trained in Astana returns home able to offer an alternative to thyroid surgery, to the scar, the operating room, and in many cases the lifetime of hormone replacement that follows. For the field, the significance is larger still. For decades, physicians from Central Asia traveled to Seoul, Beijing, or Milan to learn advanced techniques. In thyroid ablation, the direction of travel has reversed.
Dr. Niyaz Malayev, MD, MMSc, MBA, is a diagnostic and interventional radiologist at the National Scientific Medical Center in Astana, Kazakhstan, and a co-author of the 2025 international expert consensus on thermal ablation for benign thyroid nodules. Physicians interested in the September master class or future training programs at the CCMA Training Center in Astana can inquire through RFAMD at provider@rfamd.com.