46 THE QUEENS COURIER • WELLNESS • NOVEMBER 16, 2017 FOR BREAKING NEWS VISIT WWW.QNS.COM
Mount Sinai Queens brings life-saving stroke care to Queens
Maddalena Sacramone is well-known
in her neighborhood; the 92-year-old
spends time every day in the kitchen of
Sac’s Place in Astoria, a popular Italian
restaurant known for their brick-oven,
coal-fi red pizza that is owned and operated
by two of her three sons and based
on Maddalena’s own recipes and cooking.
Shortly aft er leaving the restaurant
on Oct. 20, she called one of her son’s
screaming in pain and saying she didn’t
feel well. Her sons rushed to her home
and an ambulance brought her to Mount
Sinai Queens, where she was imaged and
diagnosed with 2 blood clots in her brain
that were causing her to experience stroke
symptoms, including one-sided weakness
and slurred speech.
Th ankfully, she was taken to the right
place at the right time; once the Hospital
determined she was having a stroke, they
called Mount Sinai endovascular stroke
expert Dr. J. Mocco, who got into a
cab and rushed to Mount Sinai Queens
to perform a thrombectomy procedure,
saving time and therefore, saving brain.
He and his surgical team successfully
removed blood clots from 2 diff erent
parts of Maddalena’s brain and less than
a week later, Mrs. Sacramone’s mobility
and speech was back to full functioning.
It was the fi rst time this advanced,
lifesaving technique has ever been performed
in the borough of Queens. Until
that point, every Queens residents who
has needed this kind of procedure had to
be transferred out of the borough because
there was no thrombectomy-capable center
in Queens.
When it comes to stroke, “time is brain”
because for every passing minute when
blood fl ow to the brain is blocked, millions
of neurons are lost and nearby brain
tissue can be damaged. It’s estimated that
nearly half of all ischemic strokes (strokes
that occur when the arteries that carry
blood to the brain become narrowed or
blocked) are due to large vessel occlusion
(LVO) of a major intracranial artery,
which leave the suff erer with severe symptoms
and defi cits and which are oft en the
deadliest form of stroke, partially because
the standard “clot busting” drugs oft en
prove to be ineff ective for LVOs.
For certain large vessel occlusion stroke
patients, a procedure called thrombectomy
can be performed to remove the
clot and quickly restore blood fl ow to the
brain. During a thrombectomy, a highly
specialized endovascular surgeon threads
a catheter through an artery in the groin
up to the patient’s brain and uses a tiny
mechanical device to remove the clot.
A series of studies published in 2015
demonstrated a clinical benefi t of thrombectomy
over IV thrombolysis (clot busting
drugs) but until now, that technology
had not made its way to Queens.
Mocco, director of Th e Cerebrovascular
Center at Mount Sinai and Vice Chair
of Neurosurgery for the Mount Sinai
Health System, performed the thrombectomy
procedure in the interventional
radiology suite at Mount Sinai Queens.
He explained that this groundbreaking
“fi rst” in the borough is actually the fi rst
step in the development of a more expansive
world-class stroke center that is being
built at Mount Sinai Queens and slated to
open in Summer 2018.
Th is center will be designed, from the
ground up, to facilitate the fastest and
most high quality thrombectomy care
in the world, including having the most
advanced stroke imaging and treatment
equipment that has been custom developed
for this unique center.
Mount Sinai stroke experts anticipate
that having the best imaging, diagnostic
ability and treatment options in one location
within just a few yards of the emergency
room doors will cut “door to needle”
time (the time from arrival at the
hospital to beginning the clot removal)
by nearly 85% from national targets of 90
minutes to 15 minutes.
wellness