Eylem Akar, MD

Eylem Akar, MD is a pathology specialist in the Pathology Department of Acibadem Altunizade Hospital in İstanbul. Her work focuses on the laboratory-based evaluation of tissue and cell samples to support diagnosis and clinical decision-making for the treating teams. She has more than 27 years in medicine and works in Turkish and English.

Dr. Akar graduated from Trakya University Faculty of Medicine in 1999 and completed her specialty training in Medical Pathology at Uludağ University Faculty of Medicine in 2005. Between 2005 and 2006 she served as the founding physician of the pathology laboratory at Adıyaman 82. Yıl State Hospital. From 2008 to 2010 she was a lecturer at the Uludağ University Faculty of Medicine Department of Pathology, and from 2010 to 2014 she was a lecturer at Başkent University Ankara Hospital. She then worked as a specialist physician (Uzman Hekim) at Anadolu Sağlık Merkezi Hospital from 2014 to 2017 before joining Acıbadem Healthcare Services in 2017. She is a member of the Ankara Pathology Association, the Federation of Pathology Associations, the Çukurova Pathology Association and the Turkish Pathology Association. Her published work includes studies on the reproducibility of endometrial intraepithelial neoplasia diagnosis, an in-house PCR assay for BRAF V600E as an adjunct to fine-needle aspiration diagnosis of papillary thyroid carcinoma, nm23 immunoexpression in renal cell carcinoma, and case reports in hematopathology and gastrointestinal pathology.

Clinical focus

Dr. Akar’s areas of expertise are tissue pathology, cytopathology and pathology laboratory practice. In tissue pathology, she examines biopsy and surgical specimens under the microscope to characterize disease processes and to provide the diagnostic information that surgeons, oncologists and other clinicians rely on when planning treatment. In cytopathology, she evaluates individual cells and small cell clusters obtained from body fluids or aspirates, which can help clarify a diagnosis when a tissue sample is not available or as a complement to it.

Her experience in pathology laboratory practice, including her role in establishing a pathology laboratory earlier in her career, supports the organization and quality of the laboratory process from specimen handling to reporting. As a pathologist, Dr. Akar does not usually treat patients directly; instead, her assessments are communicated to the clinical teams responsible for the patient’s care, and any findings are interpreted together with the patient’s history, imaging and other test results.

How Dr. Akar works with international patients

Dr. Akar communicates in Turkish and English, and interpreters can be arranged for other languages. The Acibadem international patient team coordinates the collection of prior reports and imaging, such as MRI, CT, X-ray or ultrasound reports, laboratory and pathology results, operative notes and discharge summaries, arranges appointments and organizes 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 where relevant and a discussion of the options, in coordination with the treating clinical teams. Video consultation is available for international patients, which may be useful for an initial discussion of existing pathology findings or follow-up questions.