Dr. Attila Bezzegh.

„A good laboratory thinks, asks questions and stays in touch with the clinic — a result is not valuable in itself, but only when it helps make a medical decision.”

Perhaps it did not begin at university, but much earlier, in Szabadka (Subotica). I was born there, went to primary school and then to a health vocational secondary school — in the summers I worked with classmates as a volunteer nurse at the local hospital. The world of the hospital, the discipline and responsibility of patient care, was already close to me. My sister's example — she too became a doctor — finally led me towards medicine.

I earned my medical degree in 1985 at the Albert Szent-Györgyi Medical University in Szeged, where, already as a student, I served as a demonstrator at the Institute of Anatomy, Histology and Embryology. After military service in the Yugoslav army, at the invitation of my former pathophysiology tutor, Professor L. Gábor Kovács, I joined the Central Laboratory of the Markusovszky Hospital in Szombathely. This became one of the most important turning points of my career: it was here that I truly understood what it means to be a lab specialist, and here that I obtained my specialist qualification.

In 1992 I worked at the Baylor Medical School Institute of Physiology in Houston. After returning home I deepened my knowledge in many settings: I led a reference laboratory, worked on hormone and tumour-marker testing, worked in the diagnostic industry (Roche, Beckman Coulter), then as medical director of laboratory networks (Prodia, Corden) and as deputy head physician of the microbiology lab at Péterfy Hospital.

Since 2017 I have worked as a physician and consultant at Semmelweis University's Institute of Laboratory Medicine, since 2021 I have headed the laboratory of the Dr. Jenő Manninger Trauma Centre, and from late 2024 I am head physician of the Central Laboratory and Microbiology of the South-Pest Central Hospital, National Institute of Haematology and Infectology. Today I am particularly engaged with microbiome research and microbiome transfer therapy — drawn by the same thing that once turned me towards laboratory medicine: understanding the processes that run in the background, invisible at first glance.