Interview Published in “Aesthetics, Surgery & Cosmetics” Magazine
How did a factory doctor at the Borovo industrial complex go on to lecture on aesthetic surgery across every continent? How did his textbook on aesthetic surgery come to be described as “currently the best in the world” by a leading international medical journal? How did he become the fifth surgeon in the world to receive the Sushruta Medal, named after the father of plastic surgery in ancient India? And how did he establish an award-winning aesthetic surgery clinic in Germany after arriving in the country as a refugee, carrying nothing but a plastic bag and facing the responsibility of supporting his family?
I was born on January 19, the Feast of the Epiphany, on the same day that Gaspare Tagliacozzi, the father of European plastic surgery and author of the first European book on the subject, was born four centuries earlier. He was born in Bologna, while I was born in Županja. Although, if I could have chosen, I would have preferred to have been born in Sremski Karlovci. But life is what it is… In the meantime, I have bought a little house in Karlovci, and I hope that is where I will complete the circle of my life.
How I Could Have Become Anything, Even a Doctor…
After graduating from high school, I had to decide what to do next. But what can an 18-year-old young man, born in the mud of Županja and raised in the dust of Vukovar, really know about such decisions?
In the semifinals of my career choices, physical education and journalism were eliminated. Architecture and medicine reached the final, and medicine ultimately won.
I dealt with my frustrations about not becoming a journalist, and still do, by producing television programs and writing articles. I currently edit Aesthetic News, the official publication of GESAPS, and write essays, poetry, and travelogues.
Whether I will eventually write a novel, “like every average megalomaniac,” as Đorđe Balašević once said, I still do not know.
So far, I have written eight books on aesthetic and plastic surgery, along with several others on different subjects.
How My Search for Specialist Training Took Me to Germany Instead of England, and How I Completed Three Specializations Instead of One…
My father was an extraordinary man who read a great deal and spoke very little.
He devoted a total of about 15 minutes to giving me guidance about life. When I told him that I had decided to study medicine, he said he would support any choice I made, even if I decided to spend my life sweeping streets.
“But that is an honest profession too. If you choose it, you must make sure the streets you clean are the cleanest and tidiest in the world. Medicine, however, is a very demanding profession. You must practice it in such a way that your patients are as healthy and happy as possible, which is far more difficult than sweeping a street properly!”
Those were his words.
Nevertheless, I chose medicine, and the winds of life carried me to Belgrade. It was love at first sight.
In the early 1960s, Belgrade was a city that welcomed me without questioning my background or putting me through any kind of entrance examination. It embraced me just as it did every well-intentioned newcomer.
In Belgrade, I made wonderful friends and met remarkable professors.
I graduated in 1971 and unsuccessfully tried to find employment in Vukovar. Eventually, I settled into a position as a factory doctor at the Borovo industrial complex.
Even during my university studies, I had wanted to specialize in plastic surgery.
After completing my military service, I visited Professor Dr. Vinko Arneri, a pioneering figure in plastic surgery who was then Head of the Plastic Surgery Clinic at the Military Medical Academy.
I asked him about the possibility of obtaining a specialization.
He directed me to the General Staff, where I was told that I would first have to spend three years working as a military garrison doctor in Bileća or some similarly remote location. Even then, there was no guarantee that I would be accepted for specialist training.
When I told Professor Arneri about this at his apartment at 26 Svetozara Markovića Street, I explained that I was determined to pursue my specialization, even if it meant going abroad.
That wonderful gentleman from Korčula supported my decision and gave me the address of a hospital in England where he had previously worked.
And so I set off into the world in search of specialist training.
Since I had studied German in high school, I decided to complete my specialization in general surgery in Germany first, and then continue with plastic surgery in England.
However, in the meantime, Germany had caught up with England and even surpassed it in certain areas of plastic surgery.
As a result, between 1972 and 1980, I completed specialist training in general surgery and plastic surgery in Germany, along with additional training in hand surgery and sports medicine.
The latter reflected my youthful enthusiasm for sports, which remains with me to this day, although now primarily as a passionate spectator.
I never actually practiced sports medicine professionally, apart from spending ten years sitting on the bench as the team doctor for Borovo Basketball Club, which competed in the former Yugoslav First B League.
How Life Began to Resemble a Dream While Socialism Raged Outside, and How I Was Driven Away and Became a Refugee Without Even Realizing It…
In 1980, I returned to my beloved Vukovar and established a Department of Plastic Surgery at the local hospital.
Soon afterward, I wrote and published two small books on plastic and aesthetic surgery and produced four television programs for Novi Sad Television: “What Is Aesthetic Surgery?” and a three-part series titled “Aesthetics, the Scalpel and Man.”
Following these broadcasts, patients began arriving in Vukovar from every corner of what was then Yugoslavia.
In that small town, I became something of an uncrowned king.
On Thursdays and Fridays, we performed reconstructive plastic surgery procedures, while Mondays and Tuesdays were reserved for aesthetic operations.
We had a gentleman’s agreement that half of the fees would go to the hospital and the other half to those of us performing the procedures.
Life began to feel like a dream!
Then, in 1991, some rather intimidating men arrived and woke me from that dream.
With ten diplomas and 300 slides packed into a plastic bag, I was forced to leave.
But this time, I was not traveling in search of specialist training. I was searching for a way to survive.
I found myself among the Germans for the second time.
Since I did not have permission to practice medicine, I spent my first few months living almost like a homeless man, sleeping in 26 different beds over five months.
Only later did I discover that the magic word “refugee” could have enabled me to obtain a work permit almost immediately.
But at the time, I did not know that word or the opportunities it offered.
It would later be used to much greater advantage by the wave of refugees who arrived from Bosnia.
How I Beat the Germans on Their Own Ground, Using Their Own Methods, with a Touch of Our Imagination and Innovation
I knew that I could not succeed in Germany simply through charm, quick thinking, humor, or intelligence.
The only way was through hard work, or more precisely, by combining our creativity and imagination with German discipline, organization, and dedication.
As a newcomer in a foreign country, you are welcome to collect the crumbs that fall from the table where the locals are eating.
But once you rise high enough to sit at that same table, things become more complicated.
And if, heaven forbid, you rise above them, there is no mercy. Criticism begins coming from every direction.
This is not something unique to Germany.
The same would probably happen in Serbia if someone from another country proved more successful or capable than us, particularly if that person came from a supposedly “small” country.
Although there are no small countries, just as there are no small people, small lies, or small loves, as my dear late friend, the poet Mika Antić, used to say.
I therefore worked hard to take my practice in aesthetic surgery to a higher level.
Once I had finally overcome all the administrative obstacles and obtained the same professional rights as doctors in Germany, I decided to establish a private practice.
Of several possible locations, I chose Bonn, which was then the capital of Germany.
After two or three years, the business had developed successfully, and I opened my private clinic, Nofretete.
On November 1, 1999, an editorial in the New York edition of Time magazine described it as a “chic Bonn clinic.”
In 2002, the independent consumer-testing organization behind Test magazine named it the best private aesthetic surgery clinic in Germany.
This organization anonymously evaluates products and services across the German market, from olive oil and cameras to travel agencies and banks.
That year, it examined the quality of services provided by selected private aesthetic surgery clinics.
According to its evaluation, my clinic achieved the highest score, while the second-ranked clinic, located in Munich, received 30 percent fewer points.
How I Wrote a 2.5-Kilogram Book and Assembled a Dream Team of the World’s Leading Aesthetic Surgeons
Naturally, my German colleagues were not particularly pleased with this achievement.
Nor were they delighted that Springer, one of Germany’s and the world’s largest publishers of medical literature, had entrusted the preparation of a major English-language textbook on aesthetic surgery to Dimitrije Panfilov, rather than one of the many German plastic and aesthetic surgeons.
I spent two and a half years preparing that textbook.
My goal was to create exactly the kind of book I had wished for when I was learning aesthetic surgery myself.
The result was a book weighing 2.5 kilograms, containing more than 2,000 illustrations and a list of 363 practical tips explaining what should and should not be done during aesthetic facial procedures.
It consisted of 75 chapters.
I wrote 39 of them myself, while the remaining 36 were contributed by surgeons whom I had personally invited to participate, forming what I considered a true dream team of international aesthetic surgery.
In July 2007, a review published in Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, a leading international journal in the field, described the textbook as the “best in the world” at that time.
Why I Realized It Was Time to Set Off Once Again, This Time to Return Home…
The more I progressed professionally, the less room I felt there was for me in Germany.
In recent years, I had become increasingly uncomfortable with what I perceived as a growing tendency to promote unattractiveness as a desirable ideal.
This philosophy had even found an organized expression in a movement called the “Coalition Against the Beauty Craze,” which included prominent representatives of government and religious institutions.
Naturally, aesthetic surgery became one of the main targets of this philosophy, and criticism began coming from all sides.
Having devoted my entire life to beauty, with the aim of bringing the human body as close as possible to the perfection bestowed upon it by its Creator, I could not reconcile myself with such attitudes.
For me, aesthetic surgery is not merely medicine. It is also aesthetics and the eighth art form, while the aesthetic surgeon is an artist with a scalpel.
How could I remain in a country where, in my view, unattractiveness was being placed on a pedestal?
So I gathered my belongings and set off once again.
This time, however, it was entirely my own decision.
My intention was to complete my professional journey in Novi Sad, on the banks of the Danube, the aorta of my Pannonian identity.
In Novi Sad, I opened Clinic Olymp, which I envisioned as a place where young surgeons could receive practical training in aesthetic surgery.
Just as my textbook would serve future generations as a source of knowledge, the clinic would have a similar educational mission.
This is also the purpose of IAAPS, the International Academy of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, of which I am President and a Visiting Professor.
At the time of this interview, the Academy had organized seven scientific conferences, the most recent of which had taken place in Athens the previous year.
Our aim is to give young surgeons from Southeastern Europe access to outstanding knowledge through courses and symposia featuring renowned aesthetic surgeons from around the world.
For me, aesthetic surgery is not merely medicine. It is also aesthetics and the eighth art form, while the aesthetic surgeon is an artist with a scalpel.
Lessons from 1,001 Noses
At the 1999 Congress of the International Confederation for Plastic, Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgery (IPRAS), held in San Francisco, I had the honor of being selected as the second speaker among 900 invited lecturers.
I spoke immediately after Dr. Ronald Gruber, one of America’s foremost authorities on rhinoplasty.
My presentation was titled “Experience After 1,001 Noses.”
Since then, that number has grown to approximately 1,500 rhinoplasty procedures, out of around 15,000 operations I had performed by the time of this interview.
The Reattached Hand Holding an Apple
The painting featuring my somewhat younger-looking portrait was created by Slobodan Grbić from Borovo Selo.
In the painting, to the left of my portrait, there is a hand holding an apple.
The artist included this detail after I told him about a woman whose completely severed hand I had successfully reattached while working at the Burns and Hand Microsurgery Clinic in Ludwigshafen, Germany.
Two weeks after the operation, the woman extended her reattached hand toward me and said, “Doctor, this hand is now half mine and half yours!”
That was the most extraordinary sentence any patient has ever said to me.
