Heart Friendly Dr. Ozgen Dogan

By Melda Akansel - Unquestionably, heart attacks are the biggest health threat to people today and the medical community is making great efforts to try to solve this problem. Dr. Ozgen Dogan tries to call attention to the importance of a healthy heart by saying, “The number one killer in the modern world is heart problems and the heart attacks that are caused by this.” He also states that many things raise the risk of a heart attack, from bad nutrition to being overweight, from stress to not getting enough exercise. Dr. Ozgen Dogan practices not only at Columbia University and Long Island College Hospital, but he has also been one of New York’s most successful cardiologists, protecting the hearts of thousands of patients for the past twenty years at his own clinic.
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Ozgen Dogan, like all Robert College students, had already decided to go to the United States while still in school and had chosen to pursue industrial engineering in Atlanta. His first step in realizing this dream was the university entrance exams and achieving the necessary scores. However, at the last minute the attraction of the medical field was so great that Ozgen Dogan found himself at Istanbul University Medical School, following a long forgotten childhood dream. Always keeping the United States in the back of his mind, Dogan graduated from the Cerrahpasa School of Medicine and then started an internal medicine specialization in Boston in 1989 before continuing at Cornell University and Long Island College Hospital for specialization in cardiology. Dr. Ozgen Dogan also has specializations in the fields of ecocardiology and nuclear cardiology.

There are three cardiologists, including Dr. Ozgen Dogan, and two internists at his clinic. As medical technology advances, Dr. Dogan and his team follow each latest advance and they can conduct any test that can be done in a hospital right there in the clinic.
 
Dr. Dogan has a heavy patient load at Columbia University and Long Island College Hospital and at his own clinic, and among them he has many Turkish patients. Turkish patients usually come to Dr. Dogan either through word of mouth or through what they read about him in the media. Dr. Dogan usually gets about fifteen Turkish patients per week, and he has also many patients come from Turkey to see him. Dr. Dogan points out that Turkish patients in New York and in the United States are usually under a great amount of stress, and that especially because the percentage that smoke is so high, Turkish people are in a high risk group. “Moving to a foreign country usually creates a lot of stress, especially during the transition period due to problems with language and cultural differences, and this causes the person to smoke much more,” says Dr. Dogan as he states that Turkish people usually smoke a lot.

Dr. Ozgen Dogan has a lot of memories about his many Turkish patients. One that he cannot forget is this: A Turkish patient came to him when he first started to work as a cardiologist in New York. This patient, who had a large hole in his heart, had jumped ship and come to the United States, so he did not have any kind of insurance. Dr. Dogan, whose mother’s side is from Kirklareli, lent his help to this man from his region and with the help of charitable organizations, first he performed an angiogram and then during his surgery he repaired the heart valves and the hole in his heart. Dr. Dogan is still in touch with this patient who is in great health now and an American citizen living in Philadelphia with his wife and two children.
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For Dr. Ozgen Dogan, who is extremely dedicated to his career, each day coming to work is a whole new beginning and extremely exciting. He has decided that he will work all of his life, not even thinking of retiring. As he explains why he loves his career so much, he says, “The things that tie me to this profession and make me so happy are first of all dealing with the patients and making them better and second of all to teach the medical students and the chief interns in order to guide them and continue with research.” Dr. Dogan fits in attending conferences in Turkey into his heavy schedule, and he also tries to vacation as much as possible in Turkey. He also states that as time goes by his yearning for Turkey gets greater and greater and that he hopes in the future to be able to spend three or four months every year in Turkey.
Last modified onSaturday, 06 May 2017 10:07