Prof. M.D. Salih Serdar Erturan

My 8-year-old son, Leo, developed a persistent cough after what seemed like a simple cold. Our pediatrician was concerned about possible asthma, but Dr. Erturan's approach was different. Instead of jumping to medication, he spent 45 minutes just talking to Leo about his soccer games and using a toy lung model to explain breathing. He diagnosed exercise-induced bronchoconstriction, not asthma, and created a 'game plan' involving specific warm-up routines. Leo hasn't had an attack in 6 months and made his school team. Dr. Erturan treated my child like a person, not a chart.

As a 72-year-old retired ship engineer with 50 years of smoking behind me, I walked into Acibadem Atakent expecting a lecture. Dr. Erturan did something remarkable—he asked about the welding fumes from my old job first. He connected my current COPD to occupational hazards I'd forgotten, not just cigarettes. His treatment plan included pulmonary rehab exercises he demonstrated himself, and he scheduled my follow-ups around my wife's dialysis appointments without me asking. He sees the whole life, not just the lungs. My breathing hasn't been this good in a decade.

Midnight on a Tuesday, I was rushed to emergency with sudden, crushing chest pain and couldn't breathe. The ER team suspected cardiac, but Dr. Erturan, who was on call, noticed a subtle asymmetry in my chest movement others missed. He ordered an immediate CT angiography right there. It revealed a spontaneous pneumothorax that was beginning to tension. He performed a needle decompression at the bedside, then a tube thoracostomy. He explained every step to my terrified wife in real-time. He wasn't just treating a lung; he was holding a family together in crisis.

What started as a routine follow-up for my managed sarcoidosis turned into a detective story. I mentioned in passing that my skin lesions had changed slightly. Dr. Erturan halted the lung check, examined my skin meticulously, and asked about a hundred questions about sunlight exposure and old scars. He suspected this wasn't just sarcoidosis progression but a concurrent, rare cutaneous manifestation linked to a medication I'd started for an unrelated issue. He coordinated same-day with a dermatologist. It was a routine visit that caught a complex, interdisciplinary problem because he listens to everything.