Surgeon attacked by patient’s relatives

TOKAT - Doğan News Agency

Brain surgeon Çepoğlu says he was attacked by a patient’s relatives.

Turkish doctors have recently become the targets of violent attacks for their alleged roles patients’ deaths, but even giving good news did not save a doctor from the fury of relatives in the central Anatolian province of Tokat.

A 13-year-old patient’s father attacked a brain surgeon at a private hospital yesterday evening, after the doctor informed the family that their child had gliosis, not a brain tumor, as he had been earlier diagnosed.

Aslan Gani A., a resident in Tokat’s Turhal district, reportedly took his 13-year-old son T.A. to a number of hospitals, which diagnosed his son as having a brain tumor. Aslan Gani A. then took his son to the Tokat Medical Park Hospital for treatment, where brain surgeon Mehmet Cengiz Çepoğlu subsequently identified T.A.’s ailment as gliosis, rather than a brain tumor. Aslan Gani A. then proceeded to attack the doctor.

“I will not be able to operate on my patients who urgently need to undergo brain surgery ... I told them I was not going to be able to operate on them due to this incident. I am very sorry for my patients at the emergency unit. My colleagues told me I was going to be out of work for a month,” Doctor Çepoğlu said.

“I said I had brought them good tidings and that [T.A.’s] brain was afflicted not with a brain tumor but with gliosis. I said we were going to arrange for their drugs, and they left happily. Then they came back after half an hour and said ‘Cut this gliosis business, we are going to complain about you.’ They asked me what it meant in Turkish, and I told them that there was not a single Turkish word to decribe the condition. Then they attacked,” Çepoğlu said.

Police reportedly took the assailant under custody, while Doctor Çepoğlu was set to undergo surgery today.

“[The patient’s] father hit me in the nose just as I leaned over to write a note so they could look up at the word ‘gliosis’ on the internet. He then hit my hand while I was trying to protect myself,” Çepoğlu said.