In Antalya, it is aimed for scarless surgeries to also be a pioneer in health tourism at Kepez State Hospital, where scarless thyroid and parathyroid surgeries are performed simultaneously.
New studies are being carried out at the 400-bed Kepez State Hospital, whose opening was held one year ago by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
General Surgeon Specialist Dr. Mehmet İlker Turan and Atatürk State Hospital General Surgery Assoc. Prof. Dr. Bülent Dinç, who performed a scarless simultaneous thyroid and parathyroid surgery on 55-year-old Sevgi Arslan in Antalya, are trying to meet the intense demand.
Turan stated at the meeting held at the hospital that classical thyroid surgeries are performed with incisions on the neck and that unwanted scars may form afterwards.
Stating that in order to avoid scars, thyroid surgeries are performed in Thailand and China with a closed method through the mouth, Turan said, "We also examined the scarless surgeries performed in Thailand. We performed thyroid and parathyroid surgery at the same time on a patient who applied to us at our hospital and could not have surgery in the hospitals they visited. There is no scar on the patient’s neck, and since we perform it through the mouth, it heals in a short time," he said.
Turan, who argued that this technique has not yet been applied in other countries in Europe except Italy, pointed out that it is a new practice in Turkey.
- The method is not suitable for every patient
Emphasizing that this method is not suitable for every patient, Turan noted the following:
"While working in Thailand, I saw young women from France and Brazil coming for surgery. Young people who do not want a scar on their neck go to Thailand. It is also a new surgery method in Europe. We performed the first simultaneous scarless thyroid and parathyroid surgery among public hospitals. Turkey will be a pioneering country in this regard. It can be applied as a pioneering surgical technique in terms of health tourism. It is an important method in terms of tourism. There is intense demand for our hospital from different provinces."
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Dinç, who was part of the surgical team, stated that they performed scarless thyroid and parathyroid surgery through the mouth on a patient who had been seeking a cure for four years and could not be operated on due to high blood calcium.
Explaining that the patient regained her health, Dinç said, "We determined that the parathyroid glands were also overactive alongside the patient’s thyroid glands. We also saw that the goiter glands were diseased. We performed the surgery with the closed method; there was no incision in the operation. We became the first center to remove the thyroid and parathyroid glands simultaneously with a scarless method," he said.
Kepez State Hospital Chief Physician Specialist Dr. Ramazan Gürkan also stated that they have provided important services despite being a hospital of about one year and said, "It has 56 thousand square meters of indoor space. There is a capacity of 400 beds, 110 single rooms, and 3 suite rooms. Each room has the comfort of a 5-star hotel and each room has a toilet, shower, and television unit. Here, we perform important surgeries," he said.
