The Department of Surgery, University of Szeged has one of the greatest past among the Hungarian surgical institutions. The whole range of general surgery belongs to its activity, these are: oesophageal, stomach, pancreatic, liver, biliary, colorectal, breast, endocrine, as well as thoracic, vascular and transplantation surgery. Besides attending regional tasks, the clinic plays an active role in supplying regional emergency tasks. The current leader of the clinic has always been the professional inspector of the region.
The professional potential of the clinic lies in its comprehensiveness. It establishes the extensive professional knowledge and practical experience of the physicians who work here. It is supported by the qualitative measure that since 1958, 37 doctors have been given the qualification of a candidate, 6 colleagues have got the degree of Doctor of Medicine. Until today, fourteen surgeons have been promoted to be university teachers and there were twenty-five who were appointed as head surgeons.
Each field of medicine, in this way also surgery, has been undergoing an unexpected change. Application of new methods of in diagnostics and therapy has also been a new challenge for surgery. In the last decade, the introduction of minimally invasive surgery technology can be considered as a milestone in the development of the operative profession. It arose from the incontestable advance of the method that it changed almost all branches of surgery, The inevitable advance of this method is that it changed almost every profile of surgery, it shortened the time of hospitalisation and numerous traditional surgical techniques have been replaced in the clinical practice.
Our clinic was a pioneer in the introduction and dissemination of the minimally invasive technique. Our clinic was the first in Hungary to perform numerous new surgical operative techniques in the field of general and thoracic surgery, which we have applied as routine procedures since then. All fields of the clinic’s activity are both nationally and internationally acknowledged.
Our future aim is to expand and improve the professional possibilities of clinical profiles. We plan to bring about a new operating theatre for minimally invasive surgery, furthermore to establish the basis for intraoperative angiology. The extension of clinical outpatient activity, first of all the establishment of a “One day surgery” unit is included in our objectives to improve professional activity. The expansion of the possibilities in the field of transplantation – which has a great tradition – is also among the near-future plans. We wish to develop the transplantation of pancreatic islet cells into a routine technique in the treatment of diabetic patients. A laboratory, dealing with the isolation of pancreatic islet cell, isolating laboratory was built up by means of state subsidy. This kind of laboratory was the first in Hungary and at the same time in Eastern Europe. We hope that the number and results of renal transplantations will improve by launching a live donor transplantation program. We would also like to ascertain the conditions of lung and liver transplantation in the medium and long run.