Prof. Erkan Vardareli, MD

Prof. Erkan Vardareli, MD is a Nuclear Medicine specialist at Acibadem Altunizade Hospital in İstanbul, where he works within the Nuclear Medicine unit. His clinical practice covers diagnostic nuclear medicine imaging, including PET imaging, SPECT imaging and scintigraphy, together with radioiodine treatment. He has more than 44 years in medicine.

Dr. Vardareli graduated from İstanbul University İstanbul Faculty of Medicine in 1982 and completed his specialty training in Nuclear Medicine at İstanbul University Cerrahpaşa Faculty of Medicine in 1990. From 1984 to 1986 he worked at Anadolu University Faculty of Medicine in Radyodiagnostik, and from 1986 to 1990 in the Nuclear Medicine Department of İstanbul University Cerrahpaşa Faculty of Medicine. Between 1990 and 2003 he was on the Nuclear Medicine faculty of Osmangazi University Faculty of Medicine. He joined Acıbadem Healthcare Services in 2005. He is a member of the European Association of Nuclear Medicine, the Turkish Nuclear Medicine Association and the Educational Volunteers Foundation.

Clinical focus

Dr. Vardareli’s areas of expertise include PET imaging, SPECT imaging and scintigraphy. These functional imaging methods use small amounts of radioactive tracers to show how organs and tissues are working, and they are often read alongside anatomical imaging such as CT or MRI when a clinical question cannot be answered by structure alone. Within scintigraphy, his listed fields include brain scintigraphy and myocardial perfusion scintigraphy; the latter assesses blood flow to the heart muscle and is one of the studies a treating physician may request when evaluating the heart.

He also provides radioiodine treatment, a therapeutic application of nuclear medicine. Whether a particular imaging study or radioiodine treatment is appropriate depends on the individual clinical situation and is decided together with the referring physician. His published work reflects these fields and includes studies on dual-head coincidence gamma camera imaging compared with dedicated PET systems in tumor patients, Tc-99m MIBI SPECT in lung carcinoma, F18-FDG coincidence-PET in suspected gynecological malignancy, gated SPECT for hibernating myocardium and radionuclide ventriculography in dyslipidemia, as well as review articles on PET and PET-CT techniques and on nuclear medicine applications in cardiology.

How Dr. Vardareli works with international patients

Dr. Vardareli consults in Turkish and English, and interpreters can be arranged for other languages. For international patients, the Acibadem international patient team coordinates the collection of prior reports and imaging, such as earlier PET, SPECT or scintigraphy results, MRI, CT, X-ray or ultrasound reports, laboratory and pathology results, operative notes and discharge summaries, and arranges appointments and the hospital visit. A first consultation typically covers the patient’s history and symptoms, a review of existing imaging and previous treatments, a clinical examination and a discussion of the options, including which nuclear medicine study, if any, is likely to add useful information. Video consultation is available for international patients who wish to discuss their case before traveling.