Assoc. Prof. M.D. Onur Taşar

I brought my 8-year-old son in after his school sports physical flagged an irregular heartbeat. Dr. Taşar was incredible—he didn't just talk to me, he knelt down to my son's level and explained everything using a toy heart model from his drawer. Instead of jumping to scary tests, he had my son do jumping jacks in the office while listening with his stethoscope, then showed us the rhythm change on a simple monitor. 'Sometimes young hearts just sing their own energetic songs,' he said with a smile. His calm approach saved us from unnecessary anxiety. We left with reassurance, not prescriptions.

At 3 AM with crushing chest pain, I was rushed to Acıbadem Bakırköy. Dr. Taşar met me in the ER, his calm voice cutting through my panic. He didn't just read the ECG; he held my hand and said, 'We're going to fix this together.' What followed wasn't just a standard stent placement—he discovered a rare arterial anomaly during the procedure. He explained the complexity to my family using a napkin drawing, then performed a tailored intervention that took hours longer than planned. A month later at my follow-up, he remembered the exact detail of the anomaly and brought the napkin drawing to show my healing progress. This wasn't just emergency care; it was personalized artistry.

As a 72-year-old with a decades-long heart history, I've seen many cardiologists. My appointment with Dr. Taşar was for a routine medication review. He spent the first fifteen minutes not discussing my heart, but asking about my olive grove in Ayvalık. He noticed my gardening calluses during the exam and connected my slight edema to the long hours I'd been spending bent over in the garden. His adjustment wasn't to my heart meds, but a recommendation for compression gloves and a gardening stool. He then seamlessly wove that into a slight diuretic adjustment. He treated the whole ecosystem of my health, not just one organ. A master of context.

My follow-up visit was anything but routine. After my mitral valve repair six months prior, Dr. Taşar didn't just check my charts. He brought a 3D-printed model of my own heart—based on my pre-surgery scans—to the appointment. He placed the model in my hands, showing exactly where the repair was and how the tissue had likely remodeled. 'This is your courage made tangible,' he said. Then he asked me to walk him through the specific moment I felt my energy return post-surgery. He documented my subjective experience as meticulously as the echocardiogram data. He treats recovery as a narrative, not just a physiological process. No other doctor has ever handed me my own heart before.