Cagri Yildirim Toruner, MD

Dr. Yildirim Toruner, affectionately known by her patients and colleagues as Dr. T, is a board certified pediatric rheumatologist at Texas Children’s Hospital, where she works as an attending physician in both outpatient and inpatient settings as well as teaching medical students, residents and fellows.

Dr. Yildirim Toruner attended medical school in Hacettepe University, Ankara, Turkey. She did her pediatric residency in Rutgers- New Jersey Medical School/ Hackensack University Medical Center followed by pediatric rheumatology fellowship in Columbia University, New York. Prior to joining the rheumatology team at TCH, she worked at Cohen Children’s Hospital- North Shore LIJ Health System in New York and most recently, at Nationwide Children’s Hospital, Columbus, Ohio.

Dr. Yildirim Toruner’s mission as a pediatric rheumatologist is to improve outcomes of care of children with rheumatic diseases and raise awareness about juvenile arthritis, lupus and other rare rheumatic diseases through better education of patients and families as well as other medical professionals. She strongly supports and practices shared decision-making strategies while taking care of her patients: each patient and family’s preferences for disease management, medication and treatment choices need to be addressed along with most recent scientific developments. She wants to empower children and teens to approach their condition with a growth mindset and achieve their goals in life.

Dr. Toruner started working at Texas Children’s Hospital in September 2020 and is excited to work with a dedicated team caring for children and adolescents with childhood onset rheumatic diseases.

Clinical Interests:

Juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA)

Kawasaki Disease

Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE)

Systemic autoinflammatory diseases (SAID)

Dr. Yildirim Toruner has interest and expertise in all aspects of childhood rheumatic diseases. She has a special clinical interest in JIA, Kawasaki Disease, SLE and SAID.

Research Interests:

Quality Improvement (QI)

Patient reported outcomes (PRO)

Shared decision making (SDM)

Implementation science

Consensus Treatment Plan (CTP) development and implementation

Dr. Yildirim Toruner’s research interest is in quality improvement (QI) methods and patient-reported outcomes (PRO) measure development, validation, and implementation in clinical care. She is involved in multiple QI projects locally and nationally. She serves as the site Principle Investigator for the Pediatric Rheumatology Care and Outcomes Improvement Network (https://PR-COIN.org). This multi-hospital learning network brings together care teams with parents and patients, employing QI science to improve the outcomes of care of children with rheumatic disease.

Dr. Yildirim Toruner is the current chair of the Implementation Science workgroup within Childhood Arthritis and Research Alliance (CARRA). Implementation Science is the scientific study of methods that promote the systematic uptake of research findings and other evidence-based practices into routine practice to improve the quality and effectiveness of health services. Integration of QI and Implementation approaches can support improved health outcomes and continuous learning.

She is actively involved in CARRA as a group leader for CTP development in treatment of refractory Kawasaki Disease as well as active participant in development of Autoinflammatory Disease network in North America. She was previously involved in CTP development for treatment of lupus nephritis as well as treatment of PFAPA (periodic fever, aphthous stomatitis, pharyngitis and adenitis syndrome).