Stony Brook Surgery 50th Anniversary: Giving a Teen Boxer from Greece a Fighting Chance

The Stony Brook Medicine Department of Surgery is celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2024. The following story is just one of a multitude of examples of surgeons, over five decades, changing and saving lives with unparalleled skill, innovation and dedication.

Nikoleta "Niki" Pita was just 16 years old when doctors in her native Greece delivered a potential knockout punch. She had injured herself in training and was diagnosed with thoracic outlet syndrome (TOS), which her doctors told her would end her budding boxing career and dreams of representing Greece in the 2016 Olympic Games.

"I was way too young to give up on my dreams," said Pita. "I was never going to give up boxing….I thought 'I will find a way. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, maybe not next month or next year. But one thing is certain. I will be a boxing champion one day.'"

After a year of visiting doctors from all over Greece, Pita's team doctor informed her and her parents of a physician who would be attending an international medical conference that was to be held in Athens. Without a second thought, and with her medical records in hand, Pita and her parents went to the medical conference with the hope of speaking to that physician.

The physician they sought out was Stony Brook Surgery's Chief of the Division of Vascular and Endovascular Surgery Apostolos Tassiopoulos, MD. Dr. Tassiopoulos, now also the chair of the Department of Surgery, met with Pita and her parents and explained that TOS is an injury that is more often seen in certain athletes, including boxers, and that the symptoms vary depending on which structures (nerves, veins or arteries) are being compressed.

Dr. Tassiopoulos proposed thoracic outlet surgery to Pita as an option to release or remove the structures causing the compression. He offered her that fighting chance she was seeking when he told her that most athletes who have the surgery can return to full activity within three to four months from surgery.

Pita and her parents were told that if they travelled to the United States, she could have the surgery in three weeks at Stony Brook University Hospital.

Pita, who had never been to the U.S. before, arrived in New York on August 31, 2014, and had her surgery the next day at Stony Brook University Hospital. Doctors Tassiopoulos and Thomas V. Bilfinger, MD, ScD (then professor of surgery and director of thoracic surgery) performed the procedure.

A week later, Pita and her parents returned to Greece. She looks back at the surgery as a milestone of her boxing career that "helped me to become a better, stronger, and wiser version of myself." She started training as soon as she got back home. When she began competing again, Pita was often seen expressing her gratitude to Dr. Tassiopoulos and Stony Brook University Hospital by sporting a Stony Brook baseball cap and Stony Brook Medicine T-shirt.

Visit the Stony Brook Medicine Surgery website to read more about Pita's successful journey from boxing to law.

Public link

Please use the above public link if you want to share this noodl on another website.