Fazil Alidjan is a vascular medicine specialist at the Haga Hospital in Zoetermeer. He established the cardiovascular clinic there, which also treats patients with familial hypercholesterolemia (FH).
“During my training at Erasmus MC, I saw how important it is to care for people with familial hypercholesterolemia. They had a special outpatient clinic for that there,” says Fazil Alidjan. “When I started working at LangeLand Hospital in Zoetermeer—now known as Haga Hospital—I quickly set up a clinic here that also focuses on the genetic aspect of high cholesterol. Here, people with (or suspected of having) familial hypercholesterolemia are screened, monitored, and treated.” Awareness is a key part of FH care, according to the internist and vascular specialist. “It’s a hereditary condition you don’t feel, but it’s definitely there. It’s important to face that reality—not just for your own care, but also for your family and any children you may have. Knowing that you have FH means you can protect yourself against serious cardiovascular disease through a healthy lifestyle and medication. Together with the other vascular specialists and our team, we will continue to advance and optimize awareness and treatment regarding FH within the The Hague and Zoetermeer region.”
Risk assessment
The added value of this “cardiovascular diseases” clinic is that treatment can be tailored immediately. “Before patients come to see me as their treating physician, some preliminary testing has already been done,” explains the internist and vascular specialist. “By the time they come into my office, I’ve already assessed their risk based on the results.”
Fazil speaks passionately about his work and admits that his heart lies in detecting and preventing diseases. “Internists are puzzle solvers, and so am I. We investigate the underlying causes of a condition and how we can prevent people from getting sick. After all, prevention is better than cure. As an internist, you look for the cause and, in combination with the right treatment and lifestyle advice, try to prevent cardiovascular diseases from developing. With FH, you have the perfect opportunity to do just that.”
LEEFH center
The Haga Hospital is a LEEFH center. According to Fazil Alidjan, this offers significant added value. “LEEFH has developed excellent brochures, which I give to patients so they can review everything at their leisure at home. Family members can also receive information, so they know where to turn if they want to find out whether they have FH and would like to undergo DNA testing. In addition, LEEFH does incredible work. Thanks in part to them, about thirty to forty thousand people with FH have now been identified, but there are still many out there who don’t know they have it. We need to work on that together; as a doctor, I also feel that responsibility.”
Training for general practitioners
This means that Fazil discusses with his patients whether the family has already been informed and whether they need help with that. However, he also looks beyond the walls of his hospital. For example, he provides training on FH to primary care physicians so that they can recognize it early on, allowing treatment to begin quickly or patients to be referred for screening. “They need to know that high cholesterol can be hereditary. If, for example, a young patient has high cholesterol, that’s unusual. Further testing needs to be done. That’s important, because behind one patient lies an entire family.”
Radishes and garlic
In addition, the internist and vascular specialist also provides health education to people outside the hospital. “I’m of Hindustani descent,” he explains. “My grandfather in Suriname ate three cloves of garlic every day to stay healthy. He lived to be 98—I don’t know if that had anything to do with it,” he laughs. “As far as I’m concerned, people can eat radishes and garlic, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re in perfect health. It’s important to promote a generally healthy lifestyle within the Hindustani-Surinamese community. Recent scientific research shows that this is a vulnerable group with an extremely high risk of cardiovascular disease at a young age. I took the initiative to set up a health fair during the annual Milan Summer Festival in The Hague, where many Hindustani people gather. Together with organizations such as the Heart Foundation and LEEFH, we have screened festivalgoers in recent years for diabetes, high blood pressure, and obesity, and provided information on conditions, treatments, medication, healthy lifestyles, nutrition, and exercise. Of course, we also raised awareness about FH. Every new patient we identify through this outreach is one more.”
In addition to the festival in The Hague, residents of Zoetermeer may also run into the doctor in their own town. “We recently set up a booth in a shopping center where we talked to people while they were running errands about how a healthy lifestyle affects your cholesterol. And of course, I’m always paying attention to what people say about their family—whether high cholesterol runs in their family. If that’s the case, I encourage them to come to my office hours. And I give them LEEFH informational brochures, hoping it will make them think so they’ll speak up if they recognize themselves in the information.”
New Year’s resolutions. Almost everyone has them, but how do you stick to them? Real, long-term changes require adjustments to your lifestyle. How to do that will be discussed during the HagaLifestyle 2024 information evening on Monday, January 29, 2024. Here, you’ll learn, among other things, how to work toward better health and greater physical and mental resilience. www.hagaziekenhuis.nl/leefstijl
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