Prof. Dr. Hakan Kulaçoğlu
He graduated from Ankara University Faculty of Medicine in 1980 and completed his studies in 1986. In February 1987, he began his specialist training in general surgery at Ankara Numune Hospital. After completing his specialist training in April 1991, he began his military service in October of the same year. He worked at the Gölcük Naval Hospital as a midshipman.
In 1993, he attended the Oxford Academy for advanced language training on a scholarship. After his return, he worked as a general surgery specialist at Numune Hospital. During the tenure of Prof. Dr. Osman Müftüoğlu, he also worked for a while at the Office of the President of the Republic. In 1995-96, he worked at the Radcliffe Hospital of Oxford University and in 2000 at the Pittsburgh University Medical Center.
After becoming Associate Professor of General Surgery in 2000, he worked for a short time as an observer at the Technical University Hospital in Munich. In 2003 he became deputy clinic director and in 2005 he became clinic director. He worked as Head of General Surgery Clinic, Coordinator of General Surgery Clinic, Administrative and Education Officer at Ankara Dışkapı Yıldırım Beyazıt Training and Research Hospital for 9 years.
In 2010, he was appointed Professor of General Surgery at the Faculty of Medicine of Rize University. After serving as a member of the university faculty until March 2015, he retired after 29 years of public service and set up his own practice.
Since 1998, Kulaçoğlu has been working intensively in the field of abdominal wall hernias and has conducted numerous clinical, anatomical, laboratory and experimental studies in this field. After studies at the Lichtenstein Hernia Institute, the British Hernia Center and the Plymouth Hernia Service, he founded the Ankara Hernia Centre in 2006, the first health facility in Turkey dedicated to the treatment of abdominal wall hernias.
He has published 10 national and 76 international scientific articles on abdominal wall hernias, translated three book chapters and authored 40 international congress papers. Kulaçoğlu’s scientific articles have been cited more than 3,500 times. Hakan Kulaçoğlu is a member of the international advisory board of Hernia, the world’s most important journal in the field of hernias. Kulaçoğlu is also on the advisory board of the International Journal of Abdominal Wall and Hernia Surgery and is a scientific reviewer for articles in these two journals as well as in the Journal of Abdominal Wall Surgery, the official scientific journal of the European Hernia Society. Kulaçoğlu is a member of the Publications Committee of the European Hernia Society and a representative of the British Journal of Surgery.
Kulaçoğlu, who was an invited speaker on “Perfect Local Anesthesia in Inguinal Hernia Surgeries” at the World Hernia Conference, which was held for the first time in Milan in April 2015 with the participation of hernia societies from all continents, was awarded the “Excellent Local Anaesthesia in Inguinal Hernia Surgeries” award by Prof. Dr. Parviz Amid, Director of the Lichtenstein Hernia Institute at the University of California Los Angeles.Parviz Amid, Director of the Lichtenstein Hernia Institute at the University of California Los Angeles, received the title “Expert in Lichtenstein Surgery” and was also selected as a “World Authority” for the treatment of abdominal wall hernias by MedExpert, a US organization that has been helping to find solutions to patients’ problems with specialist physicians for 30 years and collaborates with Stanford University and Harvard Medical School.
Memberships in international associations:
- American College of Surgeons (FACS)
- International College of Surgeons (FICS)
- European Association for Surgical Research
- European Association for Endoscopic Surgery
- European Hernia Society
- American Hernia Society
- Afro-Middle East Hernia Society
- International Hernia Collaboration
