Tamer Yalcinkaya, MD

About

Two IVF programs started from scratch in Charleston, West Virginia, and nine years running the reproductive endocrinology and infertility division at Wake Forest Baptist Health are what Tamer Yalcinkaya carried into founding Carolinas Fertility Institute. He is a program builder by track record, not only a clinic operator: the West Virginia years meant standing up laboratory and clinical infrastructure for two separate IVF programs, and the Wake Forest years put him in charge of divisional teaching and complex-case care before he moved the practice into the North Carolina market he now covers from Winston-Salem and Charlotte.

His own training ran through three institutions and two countries: medical school at Istanbul University’s Istanbul Faculty of Medicine, obstetrics and gynecology residency at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons at Harlem Hospital Center in New York, then the reproductive endocrinology and infertility fellowship at the University of California, San Francisco. His profile puts him past 24 years in REI and credits him with training more than 100 specialists in obstetrics and gynecology, along with numerous published research papers.

Clinical breadth is his stated range: infertility and reproduction across the board, with named depth in endometriosis, polycystic ovarian syndrome, menstrual disorders, hormonal imbalances, fibroids and birth defects of the reproductive tract. The surgical side is not decorative — he leads the practice’s da Vinci robotic program, operating at Novant Health and Cone Health hospitals on procedures that many fertility practices hand to a general gynecologist or send out of region. The practice lists him as a Castle Connolly Top Doctor, a designation it describes as placing a physician in the top 7 percent of US doctors through peer nomination and review. He sees patients in English and Turkish.

Clinical Expertise

• IVF cycle management: ovarian stimulation through retrieval, fertilization and transfer, with embryo selection supported by the lab’s EmbryoScope time-lapse imaging
• ICSI: microinjection for male factor infertility and prior fertilization problems, performed in the practice’s own laboratory
• Endometriosis: laparoscopic and robot-assisted excision, including presacral neurectomy, combined with assisted reproduction when tubes or ovarian reserve are affected
• PCOS and ovulatory disorders: medicated cycles from oral agents through gonadotropins, with the monitoring intensity the diagnosis requires
• Fibroids and uterine cavity problems: robot-assisted and abdominal myomectomy, hysteroscopic resection of submucosal myomas, hysteroscopic metroplasty for a septate uterus, lysis of Asherman adhesions
• Congenital reproductive tract anomalies: the laparoscopic Vecchietti procedure for congenital absence of the vagina and MRKH syndrome, the robot-assisted Strassman procedure for bicornuate uterus, robot-assisted uterovaginal anastomosis for cervical agenesis, and Z-plasty repair of transverse vaginal septum
• Reproductive surgery with a pregnancy goal: laparoscopic transabdominal cerclage for cervical insufficiency, microsurgical or robotic tubo-tubal anastomosis for sterilization reversal, fluoroscopic tubal recanalization for proximal tubal blockage
• Fertility preservation: including laparoscopic harvesting and cryopreservation of ovarian cortex, the option most clinics do not offer
• PGT-A: embryo chromosome screening is carried on this practice’s service record; ask in consultation about the testing lab and turnaround, which our sources do not document

Why Choose Dr. Yalcinkaya

Twenty-four years of REI plus nine of them as a division director. Longevity in this field mostly means case volume in the difficult categories — severe endometriosis, distorted uterine anatomy, repeated failed cycles — and he held the senior reproductive endocrinology post at an academic health system for nearly a decade before starting CFI.

He performs the surgery that changes the next cycle. Hydrosalpinx, septate uterus, fibroids distorting the cavity, cervical insufficiency: the procedures on his published list are the ones that decide whether an embryo transfer has anywhere to implant. Patients who would otherwise be split between a surgeon and a fertility doctor see both in one consultation.

Rare-case range. MRKH syndrome, cervical agenesis and transverse vaginal septum appear in his documented procedure list. Those cases are usually referred to a handful of centers nationally; here they are on the practice’s own service page.

He has built the infrastructure around the medicine. Two IVF programs launched at West Virginia University Health Sciences, then a practice of his own with an in-house embryology laboratory and, per the clinic’s materials, the first EmbryoScope time-lapse system in the Carolinas.

Recognized by the designation that requires peer nomination. The practice cites his Castle Connolly Top Doctor listing, which it describes as covering the top 7 percent of US physicians, evaluated on education, training and clinical performance. Our sources do not give the years covered by the listing, so treat it as a current claim by the practice rather than a year-by-year record.

Independent verification is available. He is the physician whose name anchors a SART member practice that files its cycle data publicly, so the outcomes behind his consultations can be checked in the registry rather than taken on faith.

Professional Affiliations

Academic appointments, not society offices, are what our sources document for Dr. Yalcinkaya: residency at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons at Harlem Hospital Center, fellowship at UCSF, two IVF programs founded at West Virginia University Health Sciences in Charleston, and nine years as Director of Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility at Wake Forest Baptist Health — a colleague biography on the practice’s own pages also describes him as section head of reproductive endocrinology and infertility there — during which he trained more than 100 obstetrics and gynecology specialists. His practice has surgery privileges at Novant Health and Cone Health hospitals for the da Vinci robotic program. His published profile does not list specific learned-society memberships or a board certification statement, so neither is claimed here; ask the office for both if you want them in writing. The practice’s own pages describe him as a nationally recognized minimally invasive and robotic surgeon and as a Castle Connolly Top Doctor.

Suitable For

• Endometriosis-related infertility, particularly where excision — not ablation — is the reasonable first step, and where ovarian reserve has to be protected during surgery
• PCOS patients who have not conceived on oral agents, moving up to gonadotropin stimulation or IVF with monitoring
• Fibroids and cavity distortions that need myomectomy, hysteroscopic resection or metroplasty before transfer is worth attempting
• Congenital anomalies of the reproductive tract — MRKH syndrome, septate or bicornuate uterus, cervical agenesis, transverse vaginal septum — where surgical reconstruction and fertility planning happen in the same practice
• Sterilization reversal: candidates for tubo-tubal anastomosis rather than automatic referral to IVF
• Cervical insufficiency in a prior or future pregnancy, addressed by transabdominal cerclage
• Patients facing gonadotoxic treatment or delayed childbearing, including those who need ovarian cortex harvesting and cryopreservation rather than egg freezing alone
• Anyone whose case has stalled elsewhere: the practice markets him as an expert problem solver for complex or repeated failure, and his surgical range is what makes that plausible