Dr. Mihály Újhelyi PhD, FEBS, CEBS

I was probably three or four years old when I knew I wanted to be a doctor. My father was a surgeon and my mother was an operating room nurse, so I grew up in that spirit. I remember having a teddy bear that I operated on so many times that it would fit in the record books,” recalls Dr. Mihály Újhelyi, who was born in Transcarpathia and moved to Hungary with his parents and brother when he was six years old. “A very kind family helped us find a home, we got a service apartment in the attic of the specialist’s office. It was fateful that the lady later developed breast cancer and I operated on her. I am very happy that she is now well and that I was able to help her.

A lively personality with a bit of a Portuguese outlook on life

Dr. Mihály Újhelyi was one hundred percent sure that he wanted to be a surgeon. His father, who became the most popular surgeon in their area, is a serious example for him. He had shown a strong interest in biology since childhood, so it was an important background for him to be able to study this subject eight hours a week in high school.

Having gained admission to Semmelweis University, he truly felt that he had found his niche. He earned A's throughout and graduated summa cum laude in 2010.

I won several scholarships at university. I spent half a year in Portugal with the Erasmus program. It was a great opportunity not only professionally, but also personally. I surrendered myself to the Portuguese way of life. I heard the saying "tranquilo" several times, which I would somehow translate as "calm". This complemented my fast-paced habitus very well, says the chief physician, who spent two months in Brazil on another scholarship.

From South America to the world of tumor surgery

Brazil is the capital of plastic surgery. On the one hand, I was able to see reconstructive plastic surgery on children, which was mainly necessary due to birth defects. On the other hand, I was also able to witness aesthetic surgeries, face, nose, breast plastic surgery, everything you can imagine. It was a fantastic experience.

After returning home, it was time to graduate, and then I got a job at the National Institute of Oncology, where I worked for eleven years. I admit that at first I was averse to tumor surgery, but as soon as I got there, my world turned around and I realized that this is what I always wanted to do. Cancer surgery can be a huge success. Nothing can match the joy of making a patient tumor-free, says the doctor, who passed his general surgery examination in 2016, his international breast surgery examination in 2019, his European breast surgery examination in 2020, and his burn and plastic reconstructive surgery examination in 2021.

Information, honesty, trust

Dr. Mihály Újhelyi – in addition to thousands of operations performed under anesthesia – claims with experience that oncoplastic surgery provides a completely different perspective. He approaches patients in such a way that he does not only have to cure a tumor, but also looks at the whole person, physically and mentally.

We must look at the patient with a multidisciplinary eye, whose body, but also his soul, must be healed and psychosocially rehabilitated. When the patient comes, it is important that our conversation is reassuring and supportive, as the internet has already flooded him with a lot of worrying information. By explaining to him what and how we can act for his recovery, we can move forward more calmly. Everything must be told honestly, as trust is a key issue, and thus he will better understand the steps that need to be taken – summarizes the chief physician, who successfully defended his PhD thesis at the University of Szeged in 2018.

Unforgettable New York experiences

Dr. Mihály Újhelyi also devotes a lot of energy to his scientific work. So far, he has five first-author and twenty-one co-authored publications and one book chapter. He regularly gives lectures in Hungarian and English, often online on other continents. Most recently, he gave an online hybrid lecture in India, and before that in Egypt.

As for his trips abroad, one of his most defining experiences was the New York fellowship program, for which twelve hundred people applied, and he was among the twenty-three selected doctors. – I fell into a completely different world of wonder in the surgical department there. I had such “ah-ha” experiences in those two months that I will never forget. I tried to soak everything up, I lived in Manhattan, and I bought very good hiking shoes so that I could walk around the city. I took a one-day trip every weekend, exploring the surrounding big cities with a long-distance bus ticket.

Member of international and domestic societies
Dr. Mihály Újhelyi is actively involved in the work of several scientific societies. He is a member and chairman of the supervisory board of the Hungarian Society of Oncologists, and between 2014 and 2016 he was the chairman of the Young Oncologists Section. He is also a member of the Hungarian Society of Surgeons, the Central Eastern European Breast Cancer Surgical Consortium, the European Society of Surgical Oncology (ESSO) and the ESSO Young Surgeons and Alumni Club, and is even the Hungarian representative of the latter.

Hiking routes, as a family recreation

I am grateful for my wife's endless patience, as I was less able to balance work and private life before, working 10–12 hours a day and doing my scientific work on the weekends. I feel that I have managed to tip the scales back in the recent period, as I do not want life to slip by us. We have a four- and a five-year-old son, and I want to spend as much time with them as possible. We love going on hikes together, ever since they could walk, we have been taking them on easier and harder hiking trails and hiking spots. We recently moved to Érd, we walk a lot around the lavender fields, but I have already taught my little boys to ride bikes – says Dr. Mihály Újhelyi about his family.