Liver Transplant Institute

I wish you a good day. My name is Sezai Yilmaz. I'm a professor of general surgery. I'm also the director of the Liver Transplant Institute at Inonu University. I'm originally from Malatya. I completed my primary, secondary and high school education in Malatya. I completed my university education at Diyarbakir University Faculty of Medicine, now known as Dicle University. I completed my general surgery residency at Ankara Numune Hospital between 1988-93, and my minor residency in Gastroenterology Surgery at Ankara Hospital. In 1999 and 2000, I studied liver transplantation at Fistburgh University in the United States. Later, I started working at Malatya Inonu University. I have been working at Inonu University since 2000. I'd like to give you a little information about the Liver Transplant Institute. Our institute was founded in 2011. It's the only one in the world. We started liver transplant surgeries in Malatya in 2002. Since 2008, we have made great progress towards becoming the center with the most liver transplants in Turkey and Europe. So, we thought this structure should be industrialized. Then, with the decision of the Ministry of National Education (MEB) and the Council of Ministers, the Liver Transplantation Institute was established in 2011. As I mentioned earlier, our institute is the only one in the world. There's no other example of an institute involved in transplantation for a specific organ. So, what's our status today at the Liver Transplant Institute? I'd like to talk about it a little bit. We are now one of the few, even the first, high-volume liver transplant centers in the world. Our institute offers master's and doctoral programs. Of course, before that, I'd like to talk a little bit about our institute staff. More than 20 transplant surgeons work in this institution, but it is also an institute that specializes in transplantation with over 60 faculty members from Anesthesiology, Gastroenterology, Pediatric Gastroenterology, Infectious Diseases, Radiology, Nuclear Medicine, and Radiation Oncology. So, we're talking about an institution with an extremely strong academic staff. Our master's and doctoral programs are available at our institute. We have Transplantation Coordinator Master's Program and Liver Transplant Nursing Master's Programs in our Institute. Many of our students continue their education here. As a PhD program, we have 2 Doctoral programs under the name of Liver Transplant Surgery and Liver Transplant Anesthesiology. General surgery specialists or anesthesiologists are also applying for a Doctorate here. At the same time, we have students from abroad who apply here and get a PhD. We have international stakeholders. Our institute currently has joint programs with Giessen University and Azerbaijan Baku Medical University. Since our trainings are frequently held, I have to go there often. These are common to our training. Other than that, there are two or three institutions in Russia. One in Saint Petersburg and the other in Moscow. We have close relations with these centers, as well as joint projects and programs. As for scientific research, we are an institute that conducts scientific studies intensively. Around 80 scientific studies were carried out last year. In our institute, many surgical methods are titled after “Malatya”. In liver cancers, certain criteria are usually defined for which patients can be transplanted. Because not every liver cancer case gets a transplant. There are different criteria for this. Examples include: Milan Criteria, Barcelona Criteria, or California, San Francisco Criteria. We have defined the Malatya Criteria in addition to these. We have a histopathology and ultrastructural pathology laboratory where an electron microscope, such as transplantation hepatology and immunology, is used. Here, too, we are working to guide humanity to the highest quality of science that is possible. So, what are the next goals of our institute, what should we do? We are one of the few liver transplant centers in the world today. About two years ago, we performed five live donor liver transplants at the same time, the first in the world. By doing this, we meant to show the world that cross-liver transplants, which we call "swaps", can be performed not only in pairs, but also in threes, fours, fives, and we have achieved this. As I said, benefiting more people, more patients with these cross transplants and over-transplanting, getting them healthy is one of our most important goals, but of course our goals extend further. For example, it is one of our main objectives to partially cure liver disease for a certain period of time by giving the stem cells we produce in our laboratories to some liver patients. We call it hepatocyte transplantation, liver cell transplantation. Again, another goal, perhaps one of the most important problems of transplantation today, is towards people's abstentions to organ donation when they lose relatives. Organ donation in our country is extremely inadequate. What are we doing to solve this? We do organ transplants from living to living, so when a person is sick, unfortunately, we take some of their livers from their relatives. Of course, a person who has no diseases has to give away part of his organ just to keep a relative, a person he loves, alive. He has to have surgery. In order to prevent this, our most important project is perhaps a groundbreaking one in the world: animal-to-human liver transplantation. We call it xenotransplantation. I think the biggest task with xenotransplantation falls to our institute. We have to make this happen. Maybe this will address one of the most important problems faced by humanity. In this context, I think that our institute will have great studies and great developments for the future. I think we have a great mission. I think we will represent our country, our university, our city in the best way on scientific platforms. I give you all my love and respect. I think I may have some advice for students who will prefer Inonu University and Inonu University Faculty of Medicine in the near future. The Medical Faculty is one of the most important areas in which one can serve his country and humanity. Of course, our new generation of children may be looking for ways to get into life in easier ways without getting too tired, without much suffering, but realistically, I recommend that our young people who like to study and work prefer our university’s Medical Faculty. They have a very large field of study offered to them. They can achieve great things. They can bring useful discoveries to their families, their countries, our nation and the people of the world. Therefore, I would like to share with you that our students who will choose university, Inonu University Faculty of Medicine and then the Liver Transplantation Institute, have a very important field of study for them and a very important future.