M.D. Sertaç Uzel

My 82-year-old mother, who has advanced dementia, needed an urgent abdominal CT scan after a fall. We were terrified about how she would cope with the procedure. Dr. Uzel was a miracle worker. He didn't just see a scan; he saw a frightened, confused elderly woman. He spent 15 minutes just talking softly to her, holding her hand, explaining each step in simple terms even though she might not fully understand. He adjusted the machine settings personally for her fragile state. During the scan, he kept up a gentle, reassuring monologue. The images he produced were so clear that her geriatrician pinpointed the issue immediately. His compassion was as precise as his radiology.

Our 7-year-old son, Leo, was referred for an MRI to investigate persistent headaches. He's autistic and has extreme sensory sensitivities—loud noises and confined spaces trigger meltdowns. Every other facility said 'sedation is mandatory.' Dr. Uzel proposed a different path. First, he gave Leo a detailed, child-friendly 'tour' of the mock MRI scanner, letting him touch the parts and hear the sounds at a low volume. He created a social story with pictures of the process. On the day, he allowed me to stay right by the machine, and he narrated the entire scan like a space adventure ('Now we're entering the asteroid field—clunk, clunk!'). Leo completed the full scan, awake and calm, clutching his toy. Dr. Uzel didn't just get images; he earned a child's trust. The diagnosis (a minor venous anomaly) was secondary to the victory of the experience.

I'm a 45-year-old architect and came in for what I thought was a routine follow-up mammogram after a benign biopsy two years prior. Dr. Uzel performed the scan himself, which I found unusual. His demeanor shifted from conversational to intensely focused. He found a micro-calcification cluster that was, in his words, 'architecturally disturbing.' He didn't just send a report; he escorted me to a consultation room, pulled up the images on a large screen, and used analogies from my own field to explain. 'Think of it as a flaw in the structural blueprint of this one area—very small, but the pattern is all wrong.' He coordinated a same-day stereotactic biopsy with the surgical team. His proactive, visual explanation removed the abstract terror and made me a partner in the process. It was DCIS, stage 0. He saw the blueprint flaw before it became a structural collapse.

I was the emergency on-call orthopedic surgeon for a complex motorbike accident victim with a shattered pelvis and suspected internal bleeding. The trauma team needed answers fast. Dr. Uzel arrived in the ER reading room like a calm conductor. While we were buzzing with urgency, he systematically orchestrated a multi-phase CT protocol: non-contrast, arterial, venous. He didn't just read slices; he performed a 'virtual surgery' on the fly. He pointed out not only the active arterial bleed but also the precise angiosome of blood supply affected, and a tiny contrast blush near the urethra the rest of us missed—preventing a future complication. He created 3D volume-rendered maps in real-time that became our surgical roadmap. His reading wasn't a report; it was a dynamic, intraoperative guide. He diagnosed the chaos and then charted the precise path out of it.