Ali Serdar Fak

Marmara University · Hypertension and Atherosclerosis Research and Application Center

Aim To determine the presence of cardiovascular (CV) risk (CVR) factors in university students and evaluate how these factors are affected from the knowledge, attitudes, and habits of the individuals regarding healthy lifestyle. Background Starting from early ages, lifestyle habits such as lack of physical activity, unhealthy eating, and inappropr...

Objective: The Google search engine is widely used as a source of medical information; however, legal and medical governance of the accuracy of the content retrieved is lacking. The aim of this study was to assess the most read Turkish-language texts related to cholesterol during a specific period according to the validity of the content. Methods...

Digital Health; Current Evidence and Future Perspectives

Background: In the classical process, it was proven that ABPM data were the most significant attributes both by physician and ranking algorithms for dipper/non-dipper pattern classification as mentioned in our previous papers. To explore if any algorithm exists that would let the physician skip this diagnosis step is the main motivation of the stu...

Diabetes Mellitus (DM) is a high prevalence disease that causes cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. On the other hand, the absence of physiologic night-time blood pressure decrease can further lead to morbidity problems such as target organ damage both in diabetics and non-diabetics patients. However, the Non-dipping pattern can only be measure...

Objective: The purpose of this study was to identify patient characteristics and statin discontinuation-related factors in patients with hypercholesterolemia. Methods: A total of 532 patients (age mean±SD: 57.4±11.5 years; 52.4% women, 47.6% men) with hypercholesterolemia and statin discontinuation were included in this national cross-sectional...

Sahadaki hekimlerin talepleri doğrultusunda klinik yararlılığı ön planda tutularak hazırlanan bir kitaptır. Tüm EKG görselleri orijinal hasta kayıtlarına ait olup olguların tamamı gerçektir. Hatta öyle ki EKG görselleri “dijitalize edilmeden” gerçek haliyle kitaba alınmıştır. Hekim adayları ve genç hekimler için, sahadaki uzman meslektaşlarımız içi...

Diabetes Mellitus (DM) is a high prevalence disease that causes cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. On the other hand, the absence of physiologic night-time blood pressure decrease can further lead to morbidity problems such as target organ damage both in diabetics and non-diabetics patients. However, the Non-dipping pattern can only be measure...

Aim We tested the hypothesis that statin-related news stories, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, statin dose, calendar year, and socio-demographic status are associated with early statin discontinuation. We also examined frequency and consequences of early statin discontinuation. Methods and results From the entire Danish population, we studied 674...

The aim of this study was to design an expert system to predict the Non-Dipping or Dipping pattern by using several basic clinical and laboratory data through an artificial intelligence algorithm. Data Mining is a technique which extracts information from data sets by using a combination of both statistical analysis methods and artificial intellige...

The aim of this study was to design an expert system to predict the Non-Dipping or Dipping pattern by using several basic clinical and laboratory data through an artificial intelligence algorithm. Data Mining is a technique which extracts information from data sets by using a combination of both statistical analysis methods and artificial intellige...

Background: Essential hypertension and cardiovascular diseases are thought to be multifactorial. More than 300 genes have been implicated in the development of hypertension and the pool mostly involves proteins related to blood pressure and vascular regulatory pathways. AGT, GNB3 and eNOS are among the most frequently studied genes in relation to e...

Objective: To estimate total cost of atrial fibrillation (AF) management concerning acute coronary syndrome, heart failure, stroke and drug related adverse events with respect to clinical practice and available guidelines. Methods: This cost analysis study was based on identification of total costs related to management of acute coronary syndrom...

Dopamine has been shown to influence blood pressure by regulating renal sodium excretion through direct interaction with the dopamine receptors, especially with the Dopamine D1 receptor (DRD1). To better understand the role of polymorphisms in those effects, we investigated the association between two polymorphic sites in the DRD1 promoter region (...

Hypertension is a multifactorial disorder that constitutes a major risk factor for the cardiovascular system. Heterotrimeric G-proteins, which couple receptors for diverse extracellular enzymes or ion channels, are correlated with disease mechanisms. Several studies have demonstrated an association between G protein polymorphisms and essential hype...

Activation of the renin-angiotensin system (RAS) is associated with atrial fibrillation (AF). The aim of this study was to investigate the relation between AF and polymorphisms in RAS. One hundred and fifty patients with AF, 100 patients with no documented episode of AF and 100 healthy subjects were consecutively recruited into the study. The angio...

Angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors prevent atrial fibrillation episodes by effective control of blood pressure and improving electrical and structural remodelling in the atria. Increased P wave dispersion (PWD) is a non-invasive electrocardiographic marker for paroxysmal atrial fibrillation. The aim of the study was to evaluate the effect of...

Atrial fibrillation (AF) is common among hemodialysis (HD) patients and is associated with high mortality. P wave dispersion (PWD) is a noninvasive electrocardiographic marker of paroxysmal AF. Our aim was to evaluate the effect of HD session on PWD. Twenty-five patients (mean age 63 years, 10 males) with sinus rhythm and undergoing chronic HD trea...

Arrhythmogenic right ventricular dysplasia (ARVD) is a heritable disorder characterised by fibrofatty replacement of right ventricular myocytes and increased risk of ventricular arrhythmias and sudden cardiac death. Angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) gene insertion/deletion (I/D) polymorphism affects myocardial ACE levels. DD genotype favours myoc...

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is associated with increased cardiovascular mortality. However, cardiovascular findings are mostly subtle, and diastolic function abnormalities are one of the earliest manifestations. The aim of this study was to determine diastolic function abnormalities in RA patients and to make a reevaluation of diastolic function afte...

Background: Compared to atrioventricular sequential pacing, ventricular demand pacing is known to have somewhat more deleterious hemodynamic effects, which probably arise from increased sympathetic tonus and inappropriate baroreceptor activation. Endothelial function is affected by various local and systemic factors including baroreceptor activity....

Venous thromboembolism is a common complication in patients with cancer and an important cause of morbidity and mortality. Idiopathic thrombosis, migratory or recurrent thrombophlebitis may be the first manifestation of an occult malignancy. While deep venous thrombosis and pulmonary embolism are the most common thrombotic conditions in patients wi...

Increased concentrations of serum C-reactive protein (CRP) have been reported to predict major cardiovascular events in patients with coronary artery disease (CAD). Increased concentrations of endothelin-1 (ET-1) are also associated with poor prognosis after myocardial infarction. We tested the hypothesis that ET-1 might contribute to CRP in predic...

To evaluate the effects of postmenopausal hormone therapy (HT) with or without the addition of folic acid (FA) on serum homocysteine levels in a randomized, placebo-controlled design. Additionally, a non-randomized control group with no treatment was included. Forty non-hysterectomized healthy postmenopausal women were randomly allocated to receive...

QT dispersion (QTd) is a good prognostic marker in type 2 diabetic patients without previous cardiovascular disease. Diabetic patients with an attenuated decline in nocturnal blood pressure (non-dippers) have been shown to have increased risk of diabetic complications, vascular events and mortality. The aim of this study was to evaluate the relatio...

A 30-year-old asymptomatic pregnant woman at 38 weeks' gestation was noticed to have repetitive monomorphic ventricular tachycardia. A dilated left ventricle with moderately reduced systolic function was found on echocardiographic examination. To the best of our knowledge, a case of peripartum cardiomyopathy presenting with repetitive monomorphic v...

Anesthetic drugs have been shown to increase QT interval, however data regarding their effects on QT dispersion (QTd) are scarce, especially in patients with coronary artery disease (CAD). We tested whether induction of Anesthesia with thiopental and etomidate would increase QTd in patients with CAD. Thirty American Society of Anesthesiologists (AS...

Electrocardiographic changes are well known to appear with acute cerebrovascular events. To investigate if QT dispersion (QTd) is increased in patients who have an acute stroke and if this increase could be related to lesion extent and/or localization. The study group consisted of 36 patients who had an acute stroke and no history or signs of cardi...

The association between ACE gene polymorphism and left ventricular hypertrophy has been studied in different populations with conflicting results. The aim of this study was to investigate this issue in Turkish patients with essential hypertension. One-hundred and seventeen hypertensive patients and 75 healthy controls were studied. Left ventricular...

Behçet's disease (BD) is a systemic vasculitis that rarely involves the coronary arteries. Coronary arteritis may lead to myocardial infarction and death, and the management of coronary lesions due to BD has been described only in a small number of patients. The outcome of a young patient with BD is reported who was admitted with acute coronary syn...

An increased QT dispersion (QTd) is associated with a variety of cardiac diseases and predicts sudden death. Although chronic renal failure patients and patients on hemodialysis are shown to have an increased QTd, evidence of increased QTd in renal transplant patients is scarce. In this study, renal transplant patients were evaluated to find out if...

A 57-year-old woman presented with rest angina and was found to have inverted T waves in precordial leads. The patient was noticed to experience chest pain, palpitation; and develop ventricular bigeminy that lasted for approximately 20 minutes after micturition. Urinary 24-hour vanillymandelic acid level was found to be increased; and magnetic reso...

The purpose of this study was to compare the measurements of fractional flow reserve of the myocardium (FFRmyo) with results of quantitative coronary angiography (QCA) and stress single-photon emission computed tomography thallium-201 (SPECT 201Tl) imaging in patients with intermediate-severity coronary artery disease (ISCAD). We prospectively eval...

Myocardial fractional flow reserve (FFRmyo) has been demonstrated to be a useful method for determining the physiologic importance of a given coronary lesion. However, the reliability of the FFRmyo measurement is unknown in infarct-related arteries (IRA). The aim of this study was to measure and correlate the FFRmyo results of 14 consecutive patien...

To evaluate the effects of simvastatin only or combined with continuous hormone replacement therapy on the serum lipid profile in hypercholesterolaemic post-menopausal women. One hundred hypercholesterolaemic post-menopausal women were given either simvastatin 10 mg daily together with oestrogen 0.625 mg and medroxyprogesterone 2.5 mg daily (HRT+si...

To evaluate the acute effects of a single dose of oral estrogen on left ventricular diastolic function in hypertensive postmenopausal women with diastolic dysfunction. Prospective, double-blind, placebo-controlled, clinical study. Cardiology and postmenopausal outpatient clinics of a university hospital. Thirty postmenopausal women with hypertensio...

In this study, we gave 100 postmenopausal hypercholesterolemic women either simvastatin alone or in combination with hormone replacement therapy (estrogen and medroxyprogesterone). The results suggested that combination therapy is more effective at lowering total and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol and raising high-density lipoprotein cholester...

Objective: The aim of this study was to compare the effects of endotracheal intubation and laryngeal mask airway (LMA) insertion on the risk of myocardial ischemia in patients with coronary artery disease (CAD) and/or congestive heart failure (CHF). Methods: Thirty patients, ASA III-IV, having CAD and/or CHF, undergoing elective peripheral surgery...

Myxomas originating in the right ventricle are extremely rare tumors. Herein, a case of right ventricular myxoma, infiltrating the tricuspid valve and causing right ventricular inflow and outflow tract obstruction, is described. Two-dimentional echocardiography diagnosed the mass easily and cardiac Doppler with color-flow examinations defined preci...

Background: Propafenone has been claimed to be effective in converting atrial fibrillation and flutter to sinus rhythm; however, controlled clinical trials have reported variable results, and data about the safety of propafenone in the setting of heart failure are lacking. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the efficacy and safety of intr...

BACKGROUND: The effects of the antihypertensive therapy with amlodipine (5-10 mg/day) on left ventricular mass and diastolic function were examined in 30 mild to moderate essential hypertensive patients who have left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH) and diastolic dysfunction. METHODS AND RESULTS: Each patient's left ventricular mass was measured, and...

Background: The effects of the antihypertensive therapy with amlodipine (5-10 mg/day) on left ventricular mass and diastolic function were examined in 30 mild to moderate essential hypertensive patients who have left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH) and diastolic dysfunction. Methods and Results: Each patient's left ventricular mass was measured, and...

This study evaluates the effectiveness and safety of intravenous diltiazem and verapamil for the acute treatment of atrial fibrillation (AF). A double-blind, parallel, randomized and comparative study protocol was used. The study involved 24 patients with AF, a ventricular rate >120 beats/min and systolic blood pressure >90 mmHg. Patients were rand...

The effect of antihypertensive therapy with amlodipine on left ventricular mass and diastolic function was examined. After a wash-out period of 2 weeks and a single-blind placebo period of 4 weeks, patients found to have mild to moderate systemic hypertension, left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH) and diastolic dysfunction (DD) with echo-Doppler were...