The ENT and Head and Neck Surgery Clinic took on its own health, educational, and scientific role in the 1973-74 school year, when for the first time it was involved in the implementation of theoretical and practical teaching in the subject of Otorhinolaryngology for the fifth-year students of the first generation of the Faculty of Medicine in Prishtina.
The medical staff was composed of 3 specialist doctors – ENT and a doctor in specialization, while in the teaching program were engaged Dr. Talat Pallaska as a lecturer and Dr. Besim Sllamniku as an assistant, whilst Dr. Dragolub Nikollovski was an assistant in the Serbo-Croatian language.
The clinic was located in a part of the surgical ward, on the upper floor of the current surgical clinic, and the exercises were held in the corridor and in very difficult conditions.
The enthusiasm and maximum commitment of the teaching staff and the students themselves made the success and results of a high level, and today most of those first-generation students are professors and staff with a high professional level at the Faculty of Medicine and at UCCK.
Within a relatively short period of time, the teaching staff of the ORL clinic, by staying and gaining experience in other centers such as the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, in Tübingen in Germany, in St. Louis, USA, and others, manages to raise the professional work in the ORL clinic to a very high level.
For example, since 1974, Dr. Besim Sllamniku has performed the first total laryngectomy on a patient with laryngeal carcinoma, and in 1976, the same author performed the first functional partial laryngectomy. The application of ear microsurgery began with tympanoplasty and other stapedectomies, and today these surgical interventions are performed daily.
In 1977, Dr. Talat Pallaska defended his dissertation and was elected associate professor, while Dr. Besim Sllamniku, after defending his doctorate, was elected associate professor in the subject of Otorhinolaryngology during the same year.
Later, Dr. Refik Ramku, Dr. Hasan Jakupi, and Dr. Vahidin Haxhijaha were hired as assistants. After the transfer of the ORL clinic to the new building in March 1983, much better working conditions were created.
The clinic started its work with 100 beds for patients located in 4 departments: the oncology and laryngology department, the rhinology department, the otology department, and the pediatric ENT department, then the operating block, the specialist ambulance with the admission office, the audiology service with vestibularology, and the defectology service.
New and promising staff have been admitted, who, in addition to their professional commitment to completing their specialization in the field of ENT, which they have mostly completed in clinical centers in Zagreb, have managed to complete postgraduate studies, obtain a master’s degree, and later defend their doctoral dissertations and be appointed as educational staff in the ENT department. Today, they have the titles of professors such as Prof. Dr. Adem Liman and Prof. Dr. Qazim Hyseni.
During this period of professional and educational work, the ENT clinic has had a high reputation both in the former Yugoslavia and in world centers. This is best evidenced by the fact that our Clinic has managed to organize professional gatherings in the field of ENT, starting from symposia and professional meetings to ENT congresses in Prishtina, Brezovica, Peja, Prizren, etc., as well as to present the achievements of the clinic at symposia and congresses organized in other world centers.
The Department of ENT in Prishtina, in cooperation with the Department of ENT Shallata from Zagreb, the Department of ENT in Vinogradska “Sestre milosrdnice” in Zagreb, and the Department of ENT from Rijeka, has published the textbook Otorhinolaryngology for students of Medicine and Dentistry in the Serbo-Croatian language, where Prof. Dr. Talat Pallaska and Prof. Dr. Besim Sllamniku are co-authors of the book with their texts. In 1983, with the commitment of the entire staff of the department, the same text was translated and published in Albanian, a text that also serves as a textbook for our students.
In addition to the above-mentioned text, students also have at their disposal two textbooks on Otorhinolaryngology, the text by Prof. Dr. Talat Pallaska and the text by Prof. Dr. Adem Limani with collaborators in two editions.
During this period, our staff has published a large number of professional and scientific papers in many well-known local journals such as PRAXIS MEDICA, in publications of various symposia and congresses, in journals of other centers of the former Yugoslavia such as SYMPOSIA OTOLARYNGOLOGICA of Zagreb, and in well-known world journals such as AMERICAN JOURNAL OF OTOLARYNGOLOGY and ARCHIVES OF OTOLARYNGOLOGY, which papers are indexed in Index Medicus and on the Internet on the electronic website of the NATIONAL LIBRARY OF MEDICINE known as www.pubmed.com, which can be searched by the initials of the author Sllamniku B.
In addition to the successes and achievements, we must also speak with regret about the problems and difficulties that the teaching staff of the ENT department, as well as the entire medical and educational staff at the Faculty of Medicine and UCCK level, suffered during the period 1990-1999.
Due to the brutal violence of the police repression of the anti-Albanian Serbian regime in Belgrade, most of the staff were dismissed from their jobs and from the facilities of our clinics and institutes, except for a small number of Albanian doctors who were not dismissed from their jobs.
The consequences of this violence are grave and painful for our entire cadre, for the entire population of Kosova, because during this period, not only have we suffered in the professional and educational aspects, but we have suffered in the loss of the lives of prominent Albanian doctors, we have suffered the murder of over 10,000 innocent victims, of different ages and genders, who are physically not among us, but their memory will always be in our hearts, especially those who, with weapons in hand, resisted the fierce enemy and superior in numbers and armament.
Today, four years after the liberation of Kosova from Serbian criminal forces, the ENT Clinic, sharing the fate of the entire Kosovo healthcare system, has managed to consolidate itself both in terms of staff, where the clinic’s staff is now composed of 13 specialist doctors, two of whom are full professors, two associate professors and one with an assistant title and a master’s degree in medical sciences, as well as in terms of raising the professional level, training doctors in specialization and applying the most modern diagnostic and therapeutic methods.
- Taken from the introduction written by Prof. Dr. Besim Sllmaniku in the book “Monography of the ENT and HNS in Kosova” published in 2003.