Renowned cardiologist faces potential ban from profession
ISTANBUL
A prominent cardiology and internal diseases specialist faces trial for a contentious professional ban due to allegations of malpractice on a patient, with another specialist founding a platform to prompt other “victims” to follow suit and join forces.
The case revolves around renowned doctor Professor Canan Karatay and her patient Ceyhun Ülker, who lost his kidneys and became permanently disabled before succumbing to cancer on Nov. 8 last year after following Karatay’s procedure of treatment.
Applying to a hospital in 2014 with complaints of excessive blood pressure, Ülker was recommended to have bypass surgery after undergoing an angiography. In search of an alternative therapies, Ülker’s path crossed with Karatay, whom he knew from the media.
Informing Ülker that his lifestyle was the true issue and that he was a diabetic rather than a cardiac patient, Karatay initially advised her patient to drop all his medicines and only consume “a lot of rock salt.”
Ülker's kidneys failed after four years of these and similar therapies; he survived with a transplant yet was left permanently crippled, subsequently having cancer and losing his life as a result of the process.
These claimed inequity of the treatments administered to Ülker not only forms the basis of the case but also one of the primary motivations for Ozan Ünlü, a cardiology specialist at Harvard Medical School, to establish the platform involving Karatay's “victims.”
"Although the patient had diabetes, she did not prescribe him any medicines. One significant risk factor for the onset of renal failure is diabetes,” Ünlü told daily Hürriyet, underlining that advising a high blood pressure patient to drop his medicines and consume plenty of salt also poses a great risk.
With the platform, Ünlü therefore seeks to unite individuals who have been damaged by Karatay’s advice and to show that there is a method to pursue justice.
