Dr. Péter Bertalan Kelemen PhD, FEBS, CEBS, FEBOPRAS

With over 20 years of surgical, plastic and reconstructive surgery experience, as well as outstanding breast surgery knowledge and experience, the leading physician of the TritonLife Breast Surgery Center of Excellence is Dr. Kelemen Péter Bertalan PhD, FEBS, CEBS, FEBOPRAS. His professional credo is to provide patients with the most modern procedures, with sufficient information, and with the greatest safety.

I was born in Kaposvár, and then my parents’ pedagogical work brought us to Budapest. As a child, I wanted to be a carpenter or a paramedic. My mother taught in elementary school for fifty years, my father was a high school teacher, later working in higher education as an educational historian and lecturer. In this sense, the apple fell a little far from the tree, but their example also helped me in my work, since I love teaching – says the surgeon, who was mainly guided towards medicine by high school biology classes.

The combination of manual dexterity and creativity

My biology teacher noticed my manual dexterity when we dissected different animals in class. He asked me why I didn’t want to study to be a surgeon? At the time, I was modeling airplanes, which was also precise, careful work. Ultimately, without any knowledge of healthcare, manual dexterity led me to surgery. To this day, if there is any problem, I try to solve it myself, fix it. No branch of surgery is complicated! It has always required a combination of manual dexterity and creativity, situational awareness, just like in any other profession – the doctor says with a smile.

He received his degree from Semmelweis University, after which he worked as a pathologist. – It was a difficult time when I graduated in 1995, because there were no surgeon jobs in Budapest at that time. Those who saw talent in me suggested that I become a pathologist, and from there, once I got to know the workings of healthcare, it would be easier to find a job in a manual field. This may sound strange to today's young people, but the two and a half years I spent as a pathologist were very useful in every way.

Patient-centered, forward-thinking

Dr. Péter Kelemen Bertalan joined the General Surgery Department of Szent Imre Hospital in 1998, where he learned the basics of surgery and was mostly oriented towards laparoscopic, thyroid and breast surgeries. As he says, his department head at the time, Dr. Endre Szirányi, recognized that breast reconstruction was a specialty that was filling a gap in their hospital, where oncological breast surgery was also provided, and therefore guided and helped him in this direction. From 2003 to September 2014, he worked as deputy head of the Plastic Surgery Profile of Szent Imre Hospital, where, in addition to reconstructive and aesthetic surgeries, from 2005, he pioneered oncoplastic, immediate, deferred and late reconstructive surgery of breast tumors with the involvement and support of fellow professionals, using modern surgical techniques learned during his study trips abroad.

From my plastic surgery work, I would also highlight my teacher, Dr. Antal Donáth, who showed and taught me how to operate and cure creatively and patient-centeredly, always taking into account surgical judgment - he says.

From September 2014, due to his modern breast surgery approach and professional experience, he was invited to the Department of Breast and Soft Tissue Surgery, Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery Department of the National Institute of Oncology, the only “Breast Unit” in Hungary to date.

It is regrettable that a field that is independent overseas and in Western Europe has not been able to become independent in our country in recent decades and to organize itself in a multidisciplinary manner with appropriate specialists in several centers in order to effectively treat a disease that is so common among Hungarian women.

He performed his private aesthetic activity at the Buda Health Center for 18 years, and since then he has been performing aesthetic and reconstructive plastic surgery procedures within the framework of private care.

He joined the TritonLife team in 2022: - The institution's modern, national approach, forward-looking patient- and doctor-centric thinking, professional recognition, and the level of patient safety are all factors that make him happy to join the constructive work underway here.

Waking up feminine even after surgery

I think it is important to have a team where like-minded people can work with a common goal and in a good mood. Here, in TritonLife, a truly great team can be created, which means reliability and predictability for patients, both in terms of plastic, aesthetic and reconstructive, as well as oncological surgery – summarized Péter Kelemen. Unfortunately, in Hungary, one patient is diagnosed with the most common disease among women, breast cancer, every hour, so the work of him and doctors with a similar complex approach is very necessary.

Writer and journalist Éva Fejős wrote about him in her report published on nlc.hu that “Doctor Kelemen set the goal that after the tumor removal surgery his patient would wake up feeling as feminine as before.” Although this article was written in 2009, his statements are still relevant today, as the breast surgeon states that every aesthetic breast surgery has an oncological aspect, and every oncological breast surgery has an aesthetic aspect, meaning that the two activities can never be separated.

It is also true of his professional approach that he has never been and will never be a persuasive type of plastic surgeon, he always honestly, rationally and empathetically states whether he recommends an intervention or not, and what the advantages and disadvantages of the given surgery may be. As he put it: “my activity is not market-oriented, but rational”.

The organizer of the first Hungarian conference discussing oncoplastics
Where did you first learn about modern breast surgery? We asked Dr. Péter Kelemen about this.

– I have been visiting Italy since 2005, where I was the only Hungarian to participate in these conferences and training courses for years, and there I became acquainted with immediate breast reconstruction surgeries, oncoplastics. At that time, “oncoplastics” was an unknown term and activity in our country, about which I have been giving lectures at several Hungarian breast surgery, surgery, and plastic surgery conferences since 2007.

At that time, I met two excellent people, an Italian and a German colleague, who were very inspiring and were the first to spread the new surgical procedures in Europe. With their participation, I managed to organize the first Hungarian conference of this kind in Budapest, with more than 170 domestic participants, from all areas of allied professions, and domestic speakers – shares the chief physician, who is also proud to have organized the event as an organizer.

In addition to domestic and foreign study trips and conferences, he has gained a lot of knowledge during his various professional qualifications. He obtained his general surgery specialist examination in 2000, his plastic (burn) surgery specialist examination in 2003, his European plastic surgery examination in 2007 (FEBOPRAS), his International Microsurgery Course diploma in 2008, his European breast surgeon examination in 2011 (FEBS, CEBS), and then his PhD scientific degree in oncoplastic breast surgery in 2020, at the Medical University of Szeged.

He is a member of the Plastic Surgery Section, author and co-author of several national and international publications on breast surgery, the surgical chapter of the current Hungarian breast surgery consensus, and the oncoplastic surgery chapter of a breast surgery textbook published in several languages.

Family and relaxation

All this cannot be done without family background and security – emphasized the surgeon, who is very proud of both of his children, his eldest son is training to be a dentist, and his daughter is a competitive swimmer.

He also spoke enthusiastically about his hobbies. – I like fishing, and if I’m not catching fish, I’m sitting in a boat and looking at the water. I’m happy when something catches my hook, my biggest catch was a 23 kg carp, which I caught together with one of my best friends, a pathologist colleague. In addition, I enjoy doing housework and gardening in my free time.