Mount Sinai now treats strokes around the clock

Long Island stroke patients can now get advanced emergency stroke care close to home — 24 hours a day, seven days a week — at Mount Sinai South Nassau in Oceanside.

The hospital has expanded its stroke and cerebrovascular program to offer around-the-clock mechanical thrombectomy, a procedure that removes blood clots from the brain, along with other emergency interventional treatment for life-threatening strokes and cerebrovascular disease.

Until now, South Shore patients who needed advanced imaging and complex procedures for stroke or aneurysm were taken to New York City or to other Long Island hospitals. In a stroke, that lost time can be costly.

Doctors’ first advice remains the same: If you or someone nearby shows signs of a stroke, call 911 immediately — even if the symptoms go away. (See “Know the signs: BE FAST,” below.)

At the center of the expansion is a biplane imaging system that lets the hospital’s neurointerventional surgeons see and remove brain clots that can cause debilitating, life-altering damage to speech and movement. Mount Sinai South Nassau, the first hospital in Nassau County designated a stroke center by the New York State Department of Health, is the only hospital on the county’s South Shore with a biplane suite offering around-the-clock emergency treatment.

The suite, adjacent to the hospital’s emergency department and trauma unit, has two rotating cameras that take simultaneous images of the brain from two angles, front-to-back and side-to-side. As the cameras rotate, they produce detailed 3D images of blood vessels, soft tissue and blood flow in real time.

Those images guide surgeons’ diagnostic and treatment decisions as a procedure unfolds. In many cases, surgeons can perform minimally invasive procedures to treat blockages, aneurysms and other challenging vascular disorders of the brain without moving the patient to another room.

The $10 million suite is staffed by neurointerventional surgeons Dr. M. Travis Caton, Dr. Jonathan A. Sisti and Dr. Joseph Y. Yoon, full-time clinical faculty members of the Department of Neurosurgery at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai with advanced training in endovascular neurointervention.

A stroke occurs when blood flow to the brain is disrupted, either by a clot that causes a blockage (ischemic stroke) or by a burst blood vessel (hemorrhagic stroke). According to the hospital, stroke is the third-leading cause of death and a major cause of serious long-term disability for adults in Nassau County. Like an aneurysm — a balloon-like bulge in the wall of a blood vessel that becomes a life-threatening emergency if it bursts — a stroke requires rapid, pinpoint treatment to prevent permanent disability or death.

“Everything we do is designed to meet the needs of the residents and communities we serve so that they can rely on us to provide them with the most advanced health care when they need it,” said Dr. Joshua Kugler, Mount Sinai South Nassau’s interim president. “This enhanced, around-the-clock coverage for interventional stroke is a game changer for patients on the South Shore of Long Island.”

“With the biplane, we combine diagnosis and treatment into one procedure, saving valuable time that can prevent significant disability or be the difference between life and death in patients with stroke or other severe cerebrovascular complications,” said Dr. Joshua B. Bederson, chair of the Department of Neurosurgery for the Mount Sinai Health System and a professor of neurosurgery at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

The hospital has also just finished installing a second biplane system in one of two new hybrid operating rooms, part of a nine-suite operating room expansion. The hybrid rooms combine imaging equipment — fluoroscopy C-arms (a type of portable X-ray), CT scanners and MRI — with surgical equipment, allowing the neurointerventional team to treat complex neurological conditions in a single space.

“This is another step in our effort to bring advanced-level services to the South Shore, so patients and their families don’t have to travel to New York City,” said Anthony Cancellieri, co-chair of Mount Sinai South Nassau’s advisory board. “With Mount Sinai’s help, we have been able to significantly increase the complexity of services available at our Oceanside campus. That was our board’s vision, and it is coming to fruition.”

The neurointerventional team treats stroke and other conditions affecting blood vessels in the brain with procedures including:

• Mechanical thrombectomy to remove large blood clots that can cause a major stroke

• Endovascular coiling for ruptured (bleeding) or unruptured brain aneurysms

• Stent-assisted aneurysm treatment, a minimally invasive repair of complex aneurysms

• Stenting and angioplasty of arteries in the brain and neck to reduce stroke risk

• Microvascular clipping to seal off difficult brain aneurysms

• Minimally invasive evacuation of large brain bleeds (intracerebral hemorrhage)

• Targeted embolization to treat conditions including arteriovenous malformation, arteriovenous fistula and bleeding around the brain (subdural hematoma)

Mount Sinai South Nassau recently received the American Heart Association’s 2026 Get With The Guidelines-Stroke Gold Plus and Target: Stroke Honor Roll Elite awards, and holds the Joint Commission’s Advanced Certification for Primary Stroke Centers. Its stroke program also provides neurological and neurosurgical care throughout a patient’s hospital stay, nurses with specialized training in stroke care, a stroke support group and community education.

Reported by MSSN.