Diagnostic and Interventional Sialendoscopy

We thank our patients for their trust in us and for the many things we have learnt from them. We thank all our colleagues who sent us their salivary gland patients.

These patients made up at least half of our clinical series, and without this support, we would not have been able to develop in this field, nor would this book have emerged. We thank our families. They understood the days and nights we stole from them.

We started our first sialendoscopic interventions in 2004. In fact, our pioneering work in this field goes back several years. We closely followed the pioneers of the subject in the world until today. There were a few of them in the beginning and we met with them at every opportunity. In fact, the process we went through was very troublesome at times. We even thought of quitting a few times. However, at the end of the fourth year, in the last course we attended in Germany, we found ourselves among the experts in Germany, Israel, France and Switzerland. Of course, there were other experts who had contributed to the literature with case reports or small series, but we also had interesting experiences in intraductal endoscopic lithotripsy techniques, for example.

In the first courses we attended, we learnt that many of the specialists we met had either never started or had started but stopped. However, the subject was absolutely promising and pioneering clinics had almost never resorted to gland resection because of “a stone blocking the duct”. Witnessing all of this re-energised us and made us determined to make our country one of the pioneers in the world in sialendoscopic interventions. Thus, we intensified our work, which we had been carrying out under difficult conditions and with only personal means, and reached a level of accumulation that enabled us to prepare a book. A book with such a specific focus on only ductal pathologies of the salivary glands – non-tumours – and the intricacies of sialendoscopy has not yet been published in any other language. We had to learn many things about sialendoscopy at the same time as the rest of the world and often on our own. We did not want our colleagues who would start after us to experience our difficulties. This is the main reason why we wrote a book on sialendoscopy, which is not yet performed in any other clinic in our country. The monopolisation of congresses and meetings in our country and the difficulties in reaching our colleagues have also contributed to the formation of this book.

If we say that a demanding procedure such as sialendoscopy requires intensive training and that the long learning process, which includes a wide variety of elements, has cost us four years or that we believe that we have mastered the subject after four years, the value of this effort will be better understood. We hope that this process will be shorter and more comfortable for those after us. If we can contribute to this, everything will be worth it.

Authors : Dr Atilla Şengör and Dr Erhun Şerbetci

This book can be purchased from medical bookstores or online.