It is with immense honor and pleasure that we announce Dr. Omar Al Seyrafi as the newest addition to the global sports medicine scene. Originally from Doha, Qatar, Dr. Al Seyrafi, after three years of specialization in Sports Medicine at the Faculty of Medicine in Belgrade, has successfully passed the final specialist exam with outstanding performance, thereby earning the title of Specialist in Sports Medicine. It is noteworthy that Dr. Al Seyrafi is the first Qatari citizen ever to achieve the distinction of a Specialist in Sports Medicine, laying the foundation for the development of this medical field among the indigenous population of Qatar.

The appointment of the first specialist in Sports Medicine among Qatari citizens has opened up opportunities for the continuation and development of collaboration between the Faculty of Medicine in Belgrade and the renowned global clinic in the field of Sports Medicine – Aspetar. It is worth recalling that the collaboration between these two institutions began at the initiative of Prof. Dr. Nebojša Popović, a globally renowned orthopedic surgeon and Olympic gold medalist in handball, who presented to Dr. Al-Seyrafi the quality and decades-long tradition of expertise in the field of sports medicine at the Faculty of Medicine in Belgrade. On that occasion, he encouraged dr Al-Seyrafi to embark on his journey of specialization in this field at our institution.

We take great pride in the fact that the longstanding experience and consistently high quality of education at the Department of Sports Medicine in Belgrade played a crucial role in assisting Dr. Al-Seyrafi in choosing our institution for his training and specialization in Sports Medicine. The final specialist exam for Dr. Al-Seyrafi unfolded as a dynamic discussion and vibrant exchange of experiences between the candidate and the examination committee, consisting of Prof. Dr. Dragan Radovanović, Prof. Dr. Danica Grujičić, Prof. Dr. Ljubica Konstantinović, Prof. Dr. Vojislav Parezanović, and Prof. Dr. Aleksandra Isaković.

During his training at the Faculty of Medicine in Belgrade, Dr. Al-Seyrafi also participated as a lecturer in workshops organized by the Center for Sports Medicine and Exercise Therapy, as well as in the continuous medical education activities held to mark the fifth anniversary of the renewed Center for Sports Medicine and Exercise Therapy. On these occasions, he generously shared his knowledge and experiences with sports medicine practitioners in Serbia.

We hope that this significant event will serve as the foundation for future collaboration between our Laboratory and Dr. Al-Seyrafi, anticipating many more successful joint projects in the future.

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Dear colleagues and friends of our Center, it is a great honor to announce a modest but significant anniversary for us – five years of existence of the renovated Center for Sports Medicine and Exercise Therapy. The previous five years brought a lot of learning, work, and improvement in the field of sports medicine and sports science, so we decided to celebrate in the form of a modern program of continuous medical education, in which all the lectures will be held by visiting professors and associates of the Department of Sports Medicine.

Continuous medical education is planned for Friday, April 21st, 2023, starting at 10 a.m. in the Ceremonial Hall of the Dean’s Office of the Faculty of Medicine in Belgrade. All detailed information about the education, as well as its program, can be found in the following link.

Five-year anniversary of the Center of sports medicine and exercise therapy

We hope that you will enhance the celebration of our jubilee with your presence.

Center for sports medicine and exercise therapy

Introductory lecture by Prof. Dr. Pieter D’Hooghe, Chief Medical Officer of the Aspetar Clinic

On behalf of the Center for Sports Medicine and Exercise Therapy, we would like to inform you that the CMO of the Aspetar Clinic in Doha, Qatar, Pieter D’Hooghe, will hold an introductory lecture titled “There’s no such thing as simple ankle sprain in elite Sports” in the Ceremonial Hall of the Medical Faculty in Belgrade, on Friday, June 17th, 2022. starting at 1 p.m. The occasion is the promotion of Dr. D’Hooghe to Visiting Professor of the Faculty of Medicine, University of Belgrade. We are pleased and honored that Dr. Pieter D’Hooghe accepted the invitation and agreed to become part of our professional and scientific team of foreign experts in the field of Sports Sciences. During many years of dedicated work and activities in the field of Orthopedic Surgery and Sports Medicine, Dr. D’Hooghe has achieved enormous success in the surgical treatment of knee, ankle, and foot injuries, specializing in an arthroscopic, minimally invasive surgical approach. Dr. D’Hooghe will selflessly share all his knowledge and skills during his stay in Serbia and his visit to the Faculty of Medicine and our Center.

A short biography: Prof. Dr. Pieter D’Hooghe grew up in Belgium, where he started his career and then continued his medical education in several European medical centers. He has completed the specialization in Orthopedic surgery at the University Hospital Leuven in Belgium, after which he was employed as an associate at the University Hospital in Amsterdam, side by side with Dr. Niek van Dijk, where he specialized in minimally invasive sports traumatology of the lower extremities. He also worked at the AZ Delta Department of Orthopedic Surgery in Roeselare, Belgium, and as the director of the FIFA F-MARC Flemish Surgical Center of Excellence, where he has treated many elite athletes from Belgium and all over the world.

In addition to his medical career, Dr. D’Hooghe also had an extremely successful academic career. He has already completed three master’s academic programs in the field of Sports Medicine, Tropical Medicine, and Medical Management. He has attended and completed his doctoral studies in the field of Orthopedic Surgery at the Medical Faculty in Liège. Professor D’Hooghe has published over 150 publications, of which 82 papers in total in journals on the SCI list, cited 609 times. According to the Scopus database, the H index is 14. He is also the editor of 8 textbooks on sports injuries of the lower extremities and the author of more than 40 chapters in various books and textbooks. He is a member of the editorial board and a reviewer in several journals: Journal of Science and Medicine in Football, BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders, American Journal of Sports Medicine (AJSM), British Journal of Sports Medicine (BJSM), and Assistant Editor of the Aspetar Sports Medicine Journal. As a member of the F-MARC (Football Medical Assessment and Research Center) board, he has been an author or contributor to over 400 F-MARC publications since 2010.

He is also passing all his knowledge, skills, and experience to the young medical students at Weil Cornel University, where he is engaged as a lecturer in the Department of Surgery. Dr. D’Hooghe is also the President of the ISAKOS Committee (International Society of Arthroscopy, Knee Surgery, and Orthopedic Sports Medicine), where he leads an international group of medical experts in the field of arthroscopic sports orthopedics. He is the current president of the working group for young researchers of this association.

In addition to education and scientific research, Prof. D’Hooghe is also a former elite athlete and FIFA instructor. He has been hired as a senior orthopedic consultant for 7 Champions League football teams in Europe, and since 2017 in FC Red Star Belgrade, 1 team in the USA, and 4 teams in Asia. He is currently Chief Medical Officer of the Aspetar Hospital for Orthopedics and Sports Medicine in Doha, Qatar, which is one of the most prestigious institutions of this type in the world.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Department of Sports Medicine of the Faculty of Medicine in Belgrade, with the help of Visiting Professor of our Department, Dr. Nebojsa Popovic, have organized the Belgrade Sports Medicine E Forum, in which Prof. Dr. Pieter D’Hooghe gave a very notable lecture entitled: Ankle injuries in athletes. We hope that together we will welcome and host Prof. Dr. Pieter D’Hooghe.

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Dear companions, associates, colleagues and friends,

It is a great pleasure to announce that, immediately after the visit to our Center, our donor, Prof. Dr. Nebojša Popović published another of his great and capital works, the book “Champion’s Journey”. We hope that in the near future this book will find its way to the shelves of our library and become the constant reminder that focus, strength, and sportsmanship can bring great success to each and one of us.

Through the lines and pages of this unique book, Professor Popović has presented his sports and medical challenges, battles, and victories, showing how two professional loves, medicine and sports, can create a magnificent and long-lasting career together.

It is a great honor for us that our great friend, Visiting Professor, Mentor, and Olympic Champion, shared with the professional audience the great importance that Sport, Orthopedics, and Sports Medicine have in his life and we hope it will inspire our young associates to follow the path he has trodden. The basic motive is that love, dedication, and work lead to the realization of all our desires and plans. And that the period of creating and enjoying creativity lasts a lifetime for sports and medical champions.

We hope to see the pages of this magnificent work together soon within the walls of our Center.

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After a two-year break due to the COVID pandemic, one of the world’s greatest experts in the field of Sports Orthopedics, winner of the Olympic gold medal, Visiting Professor of the Medical Faculty in Belgrade, our friend and donor, Prof. Dr. Nebojsa Popovic, together with his wife Branka, visited the Center for Sports Medicine and Exercise Therapy, during a short visit to Belgrade, and spent a pleasant afternoon in the conversation with members and associates of the Center.

Even during the pandemic, we were in contact with our Prof. Dr. Nebojsa Popovic, who has, together with his colleagues, designed the Belgrade Sports Medicine E Forum (link). It was an international webinar, (recorded material can be found on the website of our faculty) organized at a time when the largest part of the world’s population was in quarantine. During the webinar, world experts in the field of Sports Medicine shared their knowledge, experiences, research results, and current recommendations related to Sports Medicine examinations, screenings, diagnostics, and conservative and surgical treatment of sports injuries with a wide audience in Serbia and abroad. In the discussions that followed each lecture, we haven’t only exchanged our opinions and perspectives, but also have received encouragement and hope that we will soon use all that new knowledge in practice and that the pandemic will end up quickly. Prof. Popovic has organized another important webinar – Aspetar Sports Medicine Collection Online Forum Series within the Apsetar Clinic in Doha, Qatar. We also used the visit to our Center to discuss some new ideas for future cooperation and joint projects. Once again, we emphasized the theoretical and practical significance of the sports medicine textbook “Aspetar Sports Medicine Collection”, which was written by more than 300 authors, world experts in the field of Sports Medicine under the “roof” of the Aspetar Clinic, with Professor Popović as editor-in-chief. By the way, this textbook is also present in our laboratory and is an irreplaceable material for preparing for a board exam in Sports Medicine. Prof. Popović has also announced the release of his new book “Champion way” in the following weeks. We hope that this book will also become a part of our official library.

We have also shown to Professor our new equipment for physical therapy and determination of postural status and introduced him to the results of the research we conducted using this equipment. The professor enjoyed in the conversation with the “old” members of our team, but also with the new associates of the Institute of Medical Physiology, Dr. Milica Zeković, Dr. Jovana Maričić, and Dr. Aleksandra Marković, who are just beginning their professional and scientific careers in the field of physiology of physical effort, as teaching associates at the Institute of Medical Physiology.

A visit to the Olympic Committee of Serbia is also planned in the following days, during which Prof. Popović will meet with the president of the Olympic Committee of Serbia, Božidar Maljković, as well as the president of the Health Commission of the OK, Prof. Dr. Dragan Radovanovic.

The next meeting with Prof. Popovic is planned for the time of the preparticipation physical evaluation of FC Partizan, when our guest will also be Dr. Peter O’Hodge, CMO of the Aspetar Clinic. We hope that with the support of our colleagues and friends, especially Prof. Dr. Popović, we’ll be able to maintain the positive reputation that the Department of Sports Medicine of the University of Belgrade enjoys at the European and world level.

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