Dr. Tamás Mátrai FEBS, CEBS

As a surgeon, Dr. Tamás Mátrai combines healing work with creative cosmetic surgery techniques with passion. He considers it his mission to operate with an aesthetic result, even in the case of malignant breast tumors, while taking maximum account of oncological safety.

I attended a primary school with a singing and music section in my hometown of Kaposvár, and music has always been an important part of my life. Although it has been a bit of a back-up to work in the past ten years, I have been playing the piano since I was seven. I graduated from the Munkácsy Mihály High School, also in Kaposvár. I have been interested in medicine since childhood. I was ten years old when I had appendicitis. The surgery resolved my complaints, and that is when my interest in surgery began. It was then that I decided that I wanted to pursue this career, recalled Dr. Tamás Mátrai, whose path led to the Faculty of General Medicine of the University of Pécs.

It couldn't have happened better

This period was not without events. At first, I failed the admission, so in the interim I completed an intermediate software operator training. Then I started studying dentistry, but in my third year I transferred to general medicine. I never got rid of the idea that I wanted to be a surgeon, and I wanted to do everything I could to achieve my goals – emphasized Dr. Tamás Mátrai, who came closer to the direction of reconstructive and plastic surgery due to a fateful situation.

I failed my final exam in pharmacology the first time, so I repeated a year of it. At that time, I went to work as an operating surgeon at a private plastic surgery clinic for a semester, where I developed a very good relationship with the doctors working there. Later, I went back to assist, and then I wrote my thesis on the topic of plastic surgery about the experiences of the follow-up examination of patients wearing breast prostheses. At that time, I began to be interested in what opportunities there are for experiencing creativity through surgery. The life events related to pharmacology were doubly fateful, since that was when I met my wife. Looking back, it couldn't have happened better.

Traditional and oncoplastic surgery

Dr. Tamás Mátrai first heard about oncoplastic breast surgery in 2014, approaching his surgical specialty exam, which has been his main professional interest ever since.

This means that we operate on the tumor from the breast in a way that tries to preserve the aesthetics of the breast as best as possible, so the intervention is only as invasive as necessary. In traditional breast-conserving surgery, we make an incision where the disease is, remove the glandular tissue, the tumor, and close the circle. This often results in a lack of tissue, indentation, which can deform the breast. With the oncoplastic technique, although we make a longer skin incision, we can insert glandular tissue into the deficiency so that there is no so-called contour defect on the breast in the long term. We also make the incision where it is less visible aesthetically, for example, this may be important for a breast tumor in the cleavage.

Mission: fighting breast cancer

Dr. Tamás Mátrai considers education, awareness and prevention to be very important. – I think it is important that the fight against breast cancer be given even greater emphasis, as this is the most common cancer among women, and it is the second most common cause of cancer deaths. 9,300, or one in eight, women get the disease every year. It is necessary to talk about this as much as possible because, despite the fact that there is a screening test, unfortunately, the participation rate does not reach 50%. Every initiative is crucial, as this way more and more people hear about this disease and more and more people pay attention to it.

Moving and gaining experience

After seven years at the Department of General, Thoracic and Vascular Surgery of the Kaposi Mór Teaching Hospital in Somogy County, Dr. Tamás Mátrai moved to Budapest in 2015 with his wife, who is also originally from Kaposvár. Since then, they have often visited home, as they have always considered themselves small-town people deep down.

The move took place because I started working at the Department of Breast and Soft Tissue Tumor Surgery of the National Institute of Oncology. From then on, with a slight exaggeration, I was involved in breast surgery and reconstructive surgeries 0–24 hours a day. I worked there until November 2019. The department is an internationally recognized training center, thanks to which I passed the European Breast Surgery examination in 2018 – highlighted the surgeon, who after the National Institute of Oncology first started working at the Plastic Surgery Department of the Szent Imre Teaching Hospital, and then at the Burn and Plastic Surgery Department of the Hungarian Defense Forces Health Center. He will be strengthening the TritonLife team from the fall of 2021.

Invited poster at the world congress

Dr. Tamás Mátrai is continuously training, he will take the plastic surgery specialist exam in the spring of 2022, and at the same time he is currently obtaining his diploma in the Department of Health Management at Semmelweis University. In addition, he has participated in many conferences and congresses, and has also shared his knowledge as a speaker. He is proud that in 2019 he came to the World Congress of the Society of Surgical Oncology in San Diego, California, with an invited poster, and gave a presentation on his scientific results related to the functional anatomical mapping of lymphatic drainage in the armpit area in early-stage breast cancer.

Playing together and excursions

Of course, Dr. also enjoys his hobbies. Tamás Mátrai: when time allows, he goes on short hikes, outdoor programs, and rock and jazz concerts with his wife, with whom he also has another common leisure activity, the online computer game World of Warcraft, which has been a source of relaxation for them since about 2008.

Pink October

Since our interview took place in October, the month dedicated to the fight against breast cancer, I also asked the doctor about this. – I think it is important that breast cancer receives even greater emphasis at this time, as it is the most common cancer among women and the second most common cause of cancer-related deaths. Every year, 9,300, or one in eight women, get the disease. It is necessary to talk about it as much as possible because, despite the fact that there is a screening test, unfortunately, participation does not reach 50%. Every initiative is crucial, as this way more and more people hear about this disease and more and more people pay attention to it.