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E.O.E Newsletter | www.huanet.gr
F.N.: In 2020 you have received the EAU Frans Debruyne Lifetime Achievement Award. What does this award mean to you?
H.vP.: Frans Debruyne is the godfather of the EAU, he did his medical school in Leuven and then moved to The Netherlands to become chairman of the famous Urology Department and the Radboud University in Nijmegen. He was not the founder of the EAU, but he has made the EAU what it is today. Initially, the EAU was a closed group of friends and experts. Frans Debruyne opened the group widely and now we have 19.000 members. Getting a Lifetime Achievement Award creates a double feeling. In the one hand, it is a recognition by the EAU and the people that decided to give it to me, but also it creates the feeling that “you are done, you are finished, thank you and you are out”. I didn’t stop since then. I am still pretty active and I will continue, as long as I am able to do that. But the award was indeed a great sign of recognition of what I have achieved in urology in my lifetime.
T.S.: Would you recommend your Department in Leuven for a young urologist who wants to follow a fellowship program?
H.vP.: Absolutely! We usually have two or three fellows from abroad. These young people start with clinical research for one or two years and then they proceed to a training program. We have people constantly from everywhere in Europe in Leuven. I meet them on staff meetings and in scientific events, that we frequently have here. It is so pleasant to see them really work hard from the morning till the evening. Also, they gradually start getting involved in clinical work. We have certainly possibilities to accommodate people who are interested. Unfortunately, there is always a problem with the language, but as long as you do not need to get involved with the outpatient clinics, where you need to speak the language, this is not too much of a problem. They can get involved in attending and assisting in theatre programmes. But they need to apply, they need to have an endorsement letter from their boss or their colleague with some specifications, so that they can be evaluated somehow beforehand. As I said earlier, the EAU gives to its young members scholarships and pays for them. If you or your Department want a Professor from Rotterdam or Munich to come and visit your department, the EAU will pay for this visiting professorship through its EAU Scholarship program. So, I think there are a lot of possible interactions. Young Greek urologists
can go to places and apply for scholarship grants, so as they get paid for travel and accommodation costs. Being a junior member of the EAU offers a lot of advantages and possibilities.
T.S.: The next questions are a little bit specific. Do you believe that residents should be still trained in open surgery?
H.vP.: Yes, I believe they should. I am obviously biased, because I did myself five years of General Surgery, which included vascular surgery, abdominal surgery, thoracic surgery, and trauma before I started the three years of Urology. I have always been fighting in the accreditation system in Belgium to continue to impose three years of General Surgery before starting the three or four years of residency in Urology. This has been weakened down and our authorities require now two years of General Surgery and four years of Urology. There are other countries, where Urological training is just five years of Urology. I think this is not good. If you want to be enough surgically skilled, I think it is important to have this general surgical background. Starting Urology and being exclusively or mostly trained in minimal invasive techniques is something that happens more and more. When I started Urology, we were a rather small low-profile specialty doing small genital surgery and endoscopy. If we are now going to do just endoscopy, laparoscopy and robotic-assisted surgery, there will be an entire part of surgical Urology that we will lose. I have been fighting all of my life, for not having to invite an abdominal surgeon to come and do the ileocutaneostomy, as we were doing in the past. The urologists were taking the bladder out and then a surgeon was doing the diversion. If we go back to becoming just minimal invasive surgeons, who is going to do the vena cava thrombus, who will do the retroperitoneal lymph node dissections with bulky disease for kidney or testicular cancers? The abdominal surgeons or oncological surgeons are going to do that. I am convinced that we still need open surgery, if we want Urology to stay in the position where it is now. I don’t think that you need to train every urologist in open surgery, because the number of open surgeries will decrease. But if you are in a large Center, you will need at least one or two skilled open urological surgeons. Otherwise, we will lose the field again to the abdominal and thoracic surgeons.
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