Carl Luss, a heart patient at Mount Sinai Union Square, got a second chance at life after suffering cardiac arrest.
“My care was complicated, and I needed to see many people,” he says. “The doctors and nursing staff at Mount Sinai were terrific, and I ended up having heart surgery that saved my life.”
When he retired, Carl decided to see a cardiologist because his family had a history of heart disease. He got a recommendation from his Mount Sinai family physician, Joshua Issack, MD. So he made an appointment with Dennis Finkielstein, MD, a cardiologist and an Associate Professor of Medicine (Cardiology) at the Icahn School of Medicine. He called to come in a few weeks earlier because he had an extremely busy schedule in the months ahead, including doing work on his summer house on Fire Island. He feels extremely lucky the office could see him. He ended up going into cardiac arrest there in the office and was resuscitated by Dr. Finkielstein.
He would later receive two stents and an implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD), and was diagnosed with a sclerotic aortic valve. Normally, patients are advised to wait six months before having another heart procedure. But soon afterwards, he developed shortness of breath and angina, so once again, he called Dr. Finkielstein. Dr. Finkielstein saw him immediately.
“I wanted to wait because I had things to do at my summer house, but Dr. Finkielstein insisted that I come in right away,” he says. He ended up having quadruple bypass and aortic valve replacement at Mount Sinai Beth Israel, done by John Puskas, MD, who is Director of Surgical Coronary Revascularization for the Mount Sinai Health System.
“I live in the East Village, so Mount Sinai Union Square is less than a mile away,” he says. “It’s a convenient and wonderful building where I experienced one-stop shopping for all of my medical and health care procedures, from getting blood drawn to seeing the vascular surgeon who treated my leg post op. Best of all, you can go in and set up all of your appointments for one day.”