Awarded by the American College of Physicians: Who is Serdar Turhal?
This year, the award given by the American College of Physicians, the largest medical specialty organization in the USA, since 1923, went to Turkish oncology specialist Prof. Dr. Serdar Turhal and was deemed worthy. Okay, but why; What did this Turkish professor do to deserve the award?
Philadelphia-based American College of Physicians/ACP is the country's largest medical specialty organization with 161 thousand members. Its official journal, Annals of Internal Medicine, is one of the five most important medical journals. ACP has also been giving the "Mastership" award, one of the most prestigious awards in the medical world, since 1923. One of the three people to be awarded this year is Turkish doctor Prof. Dr. Serdar Turhal.
It has 3 thousand 650 references
Turhal started his medical education in Cerrahpaşa in 1982 and continued in the USA in 1987. He completed his residency at Yale University and Mount Sinai Hospital. In 1997, he founded and headed the medical oncology department at Marmara University. He served as the president of the Turkish Oncology Association between 2016-2021. He is the author of more than 110 articles published in international peer-reviewed journals and 3,650 citations to these articles.
The first factor that influenced Prof Turhal to be deemed worthy of the award is the guide he prepared on digestive system cancer at EORTC (European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer), where he has been in the working groups since 2000. So much so that this guide is currently one of the guides works related to digestive system cancers. The second factor is his contributions as the founding chairman of the medical oncology department at UEMS (European Union of Medical Specialists), which includes 1.6 million physicians.
Onco-Bridge project
Most recently, Prof Turhal founded Onco-Bridge, a regional working group, in 2014, bringing together Turkey with Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Georgia, Lebanon, Israel, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. In this context, he organized the International Congress of Oncology Sciences (ICONS) meeting in Turkey in 2017, 2018 and 2019.
A coincidence that came after 20 years
Prof Turhal also tells about an experience he had in the USA: “When I finished medical school, I had to do my internship. No Internet. I was finding the names and addresses of doctors from articles and books and sending letters. One day, I heard two doctors in the hospital talking about a letter a Turk had sent them. One of them said, 'Let us help.' "I became the doctor who treated the cancer of the sister of the person who helped me during my internship, 20 years later."