A physician’s view behind every measurement.

Op. Dr. Hilmi Karadeniz is an orthopaedic and trauma surgeon who has built his practice around athletes. He studied medicine at Istanbul University Faculty of Medicine and went on to work in orthopaedics and traumatology at leading Istanbul hospitals.

He sees patients at his private clinic in Istanbul and operates at partner hospitals in the city. In the clinic’s Sportoteam physiotherapy centre, an athlete’s care is managed by one team from first assessment to return to play.

His fields are the knee, shoulder and hip, sports injuries, arthroscopic surgery, joint replacement and regenerative treatments including stem cell therapy and PRP. He is a faculty member of the orthopaedic training programme of ISSCA (International Society for Stem Cell Application).

He follows athletes from more than 100 football clubs across Türkiye and runs pre- and post-injury monitoring for teams competing in European competitions. Athletes come to his clinic from the Balkans, the Caucasus, Central Asia and the Middle East.

At SPORTOVISION he holds two roles.

• Athlete health lead: He sets how the programme protects the athlete: which findings matter, which thresholds trigger action, and how screening, load management and treatment join into a single pathway.
• Advisory physician: He brings the clinical view to clubs, academies and families. He reads measurement results together with the examination, and decides when an athlete moves from screening to treatment and when they are ready to return to play.

The principle that “data alone clears no one” rests on his clinical judgement.

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Mehmet Karaca is a cardiologist and academic. He graduated from Hacettepe University Faculty of Medicine in 2008 and completed his cardiology specialty training at one of Istanbul’s leading cardiovascular teaching and research hospitals. After his public-service period as a cardiologist in Hatay, he moved to Istanbul in 2016.

Since then he has worked at a leading private hospital in Istanbul, in both the cardiology clinic and the coronary intensive care unit. He is an associate professor in the Department of Cardiology at Üsküdar University Faculty of Medicine, and a member of the Turkish Society of Cardiology (TSC) and the European Society of Cardiology (ESC).

Why cardiology matters for athletes

The heart is the organ an athlete loads the most and sees the least. Training changes the heart: a well-trained heart grows and beats more slowly at rest. Most of the time this is a healthy adaptation known as the “athlete’s heart”. Rarely, similar changes hide an inherited or structural problem that intense exercise can bring to the surface.

Telling the two apart is the job of a cardiologist, not a device. It matters most in three situations:

• Before the season: cardiac screening with an ECG and, where needed, echocardiography, interpreted against athlete-specific criteria.
• When symptoms appear during exercise: chest pain, palpitations, unexplained breathlessness or fainting.
• Returning to play after illness: for example after a viral infection that may have affected the heart.

At SPORTOVISION he advises on the cardiology side of the programme: which athlete needs which cardiac check, how ECG and imaging findings are interpreted in the context of training, and when an athlete is referred, rested or cleared. Screening reduces risk but cannot remove it entirely, which is why every cardiac finding is read by a physician.

Çağrı Erdem came to nutrition from the pool. She started swimming at four and swam for twelve years, around four of them as a professional athlete at one of Türkiye’s leading sports clubs. She earned her swimming coaching certificate while still in high school and has been coaching young swimmers ever since.

She graduated from the Department of Nutrition and Dietetics at Yeditepe University in 2023. During her studies she completed placements at clinics and private centres in Istanbul, including sports nutrition and bariatric-surgery nutrition. She has further training in sports nutrition, nutrition psychology, eating disorders and functional nutrition, and holds Level 1 Pilates Instructor and lifeguard certificates.

Since 2024 she has worked as a sports dietitian at Sportoteam, offering in-person and online consultations. Having lived an athlete’s life herself, she knows early-morning sessions, race weeks, and weight and growth phases, and builds plans an athlete can actually follow.

Why nutrition matters for athletes

Training is the stimulus; nutrition is what turns that stimulus into progress. An athlete who does not take in enough energy for their training load recovers more slowly, loses power and becomes more vulnerable to illness and injury. In female and young athletes it can also affect hormonal balance and bone health. Known as Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport (RED-S), this picture is common and often goes unnoticed.

Nutrition matters most in four areas:

• Energy and recovery: Matching intake to the week’s training load, not only to match day.
• Hydration: Especially in the heat; even small fluid losses reduce performance.
• Body composition: Changing weight or muscle mass safely, without crash diets.
• Supplements: Using only what is needed, and only tested products. Contaminated supplements are a known cause of anti-doping violations.

For children and adolescents the aim is not a diet but healthy eating habits that support growth.

At SPORTOVISION she turns nutrition-related findings into a workable plan. The nutrition-response markers in Sports DNA and the microbiome assessment are read together with the athlete’s training load and growth stage.