Founder · Smart Surgical Team
Prof. Abdulwahid M. Salih
Iraq's best thyroid surgeon
Head & Neck & Thyroid Surgery · M.D. (General Surgery)
Prof. Abdulwahid M. Salih is the founder of Smart Surgical Team and Smart Health Tower in Sulaymaniyah, and a professor at the University of Sulaimani College of Medicine. Over more than two decades he has performed more than 15,000 operations and published more than 200 papers, building the region's leading centre for thyroid and head & neck surgery.
- operations performed
- 15,000+
- total thyroidectomies
- 7,000+
- published papers
- 200+
- citations on Google Scholar
- 2,100+
A surgeon patients travel for
Patients come to Prof. Abdulwahid from across Iraq and the wider region for the operations other centres refer on: recurrent goitre, thyroid cancer that has spread to the neck, parotid tumours and complex parathyroid disease. His caseload is among the largest of any thyroid surgeon in the Middle East.
He leads a team of fellowship-trained surgeons, a radiologist, a pathologist and an endocrinologist, so every patient is planned, operated on and followed up by specialists who work side by side at Smart Health Tower.
Surgical experience
- More than 7,000 total thyroidectomies, including recurrent goitre and thyroid cancer
- More than 2,000 thyroid lobectomies
- More than 1,700 operations for papillary thyroid carcinoma
- More than 900 neck dissections
- More than 450 parotid operations
- More than 200 parathyroid operations
- More than 200 thyroglossal cyst (Sistrunk) operations
- More than 1,700 breast operations
Research and teaching
Prof. Abdulwahid has published more than 200 papers, cited more than 2,100 times, with an h-index of 25 on Google Scholar. His work ranges from thyroid and parathyroid surgery to rare head and neck tumours, and every case the team publishes on this site comes from the operating room he leads.
He is President of the Middle East Thyroid Summit, which brought international thyroid and endocrine surgeons to Sulaymaniyah in 2024 and again in August 2026.
Education, awards and memberships
- M.B.Ch.B., College of Medicine, Salahaddin University (1998)
- Ph.D. in Medicine, University of Khartoum (2005)
- Professor, College of Medicine, University of Sulaimani
- McGowan Award, Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland
- Member, Kurdistan Medical Association
- Member, Asian Society of Thyroid Surgery
- Member, Asian Hernia Society
- Member, International Pilonidal Society
Recent papers on this site
116 of his papers are published on this site
- Axillary fibroadenoma: A rare case report and review of literatureRadiology Case Reports · 2026
- Breast edema and Peau d'Orange: a hypothesis for redefining pT4b and pT4dMedical Hypotheses · 2026
- Breast sarcoma with unusual metastasis: case report and literature reviewHuman Pathology Reports · 2026
- Squamous dedifferentiation and differentiated high-grade transformation of papillary thyroid carcinoma in metastatic lymph nodes: Two cases and literature reviewRadiology Case Reports · 2026
- Warthin-like subtype of papillary thyroid carcinomaResearch Connections · 2026
- Anaplastic Thyroid Carcinoma and Toxic Multinodular Goiter: A Case Report and Literature ReviewJudi Clinical Journal · 2026