Dr. Sancak Yuksel Celebrates 15 Years of Service to UTHealth Houston
Sancak Yuksel, MD, an associate professor in the Department of Otorhinolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery at McGovern Medical School, was recognized for 15 years of service at UTHealth Houston in the 2024-2025 academic year. Dr. Yuksel is a pediatric otolaryngologist and an adult otologist-neurotologist and lateral skull base surgeon who treats highly complex medical and surgical cases in these subspecialties. He is also subspecialized in sialendoscopy for salivary gland stones and strictures and is one of a handful of surgeons who perform these procedures in the nation.
A native of Turkey, Dr. Yuksel was motivated to attend medical school because “doctors have a daily opportunity to improve the health, quality of life, and happiness of patients and their families.” He is the first physician in his extended family.
Dr. Yuksel received his medical degree at Hacettepe University School of Medicine in Ankara in 1992, after six years of study plus an extra elective year of English preparation. He completed a year of internal medicine residency and then finished residency training in otolaryngology at Cerrahpasa Medical School at Istanbul University.
Afterwards, he completed advanced fellowship training in head and neck surgery, skull base surgery and otology-neurotology. “Normally in Turkey we train physicians for five more years in preparation for a position as associate professor,” he says. “Faculty members want you to excel at everything because you will be one of them, so I had extensive training in almost every aspect of otorhinolaryngology, including complex head and neck cancer, ears, rhinoplasty, and sinus surgery. The only piece missing for me was pediatrics.”
Three years into his advanced training, Dr. Yuksel had an opportunity to go to the U.S., where he served as a research fellow in the Basic Science Laboratory of the Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, working on numerous National Institutes of Health-funded projects focused on the middle ear and Eustachian tube pathophysiology. His original plan was to return to Turkey, but when the hospital awarded him the Lester A. Hamburg Endowed Fellowship in Pediatric Otolaryngology, he and his family stayed. During that time, he also served as an instructor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.
“I was happy to find the missing pediatrics piece of my training, and in doing so, I discovered my calling,” he says. “When I was a younger surgeon, I thought that operating on a complex patient for six or seven hours was the pinnacle of practice. After more experience in pediatric otolaryngology, my view changed. Often just a 15-minute surgery makes a huge difference in a child’s life. I enjoy making those big differences.”
Dr. Yuksel says his tenure in the Department of Otorhinolaryngology is his longest in a single practice. “I’m happy at the medical center. My goal is to be a good physician and serve my patients well,” he adds. “We treat a lot of challenging cases, and we also have the extraordinary opportunity to teach residents.”
He was named Faculty Member of the Year by residents in the Department of Otorhinolaryngology in 2022, after previously being named in 2009. Between those two recognitions, he has been honored with the UTHealth Houston Dean’s Teaching Excellence Award five times. He has made invited presentations nationally and internationally, has co-authored articles published in peer-reviewed journals, authored book chapters, and served as co-editor of two medical books translated from English to Turkish.