Updated on Jun 30, 2022 | Featured, Patient Stories
After giving birth to her first child, Melinda Constantine was diagnosed with a rare type of heart failure that can happen during pregnancy or right after delivery. Under the care of Anelechi Anyanwu, MD, Surgical Director of the Mechanical Circulatory Support and Heart Transplant Program, and Sean P. Pinney, MD, Director of Heart Failure and Transplantation at Mount Sinai Heart, Melinda now has a mechanical pump and has been able to return to normal life.
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Updated on Jun 30, 2022 | Patient Stories
Ludwig Charatan, who survived the Holocaust, has now survived a cancerous tumor in his gallbladder, with the help of Daniel Labow, MD, chief of surgical oncology at The Mount Sinai Hospital, and Michael Marin, MD, chair of surgery at Mount Sinai Health System.
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Updated on Jun 30, 2022 | Patient Stories
Hundreds of children saved by heart surgery in state-of-the art procedures ranging from valve repairs to heart transplants returned to Kravis Children’s hospital at Mount Sinai to celebrate life at their annual Reunion Party.
Updated on Jun 30, 2022 | Featured, Patient Stories
“Doing Phenomenally Well”
Kaitlyn Crutchlow and dad Ross visit Anna Nowak-Wegrzyn, MD.
After birth, Kaitlyn Crutchlow seemed headed down the same high-risk road as her two brothers, who counted 30 allergies between them. At 4 weeks, she already had body-wide eczema and tested positive for milk and egg allergies. And blood and skin tests at the Elliot and Roslyn Jaffe Food Allergy Institute at Mount Sinai also showed a negative reaction to peanut, which prompted her physician, Anna Nowak-Wegrzyn, MD, Associate Professor of Pediatrics (Allergy and Immunology) at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, to start the infant at 6 months on a slurry of peanut butter and hot water through an eye dropper. “The idea of giving a potentially highly allergic food to an infant unable to verbalize was kind of nerve-racking,” admits Kaitlyn’s mother, Jenny Crutchlow.
Now, at 16 months of age, Kaitlyn is “doing phenomenally well,” reports her mom. A small rash around her mouth and some hives on the torso caused concern initially, but they disappeared after a month and now she consumes peanut-containing foods every day without any reaction. And that has given Ms. Crutchlow the luxury to think about a world free of the constant threat of allergic reactions. “Imagine your child being able to go to birthday parties without worrying about her having a piece of cake,” she says, “or eating at a restaurant without fear that anaphylaxis—a potentially fatal reaction to allergy—is around the corner.”
“Hopeful and Relieved”
Chia Kuo with son Ander
“I think many parents of kids with allergies have this level of guilt that they could have done something differently,” says Chia Kuo, whose 4-year-old twin daughters have food allergies, one of whom has a severe allergy to peanut. So, when her son, Ander, was born, Ms. Kuo was determined to give him an advantage her daughters did not have. She brought him to the Jaffe Food Allergy Institute for testing at 4 months and, soon after, under physician supervision, began introducing him to peanut-containing food as part of a risk-reduction regimen.
Mount Sinai’s Dr. Nowak-Wegrzyn has treated Ander’s older sisters for nearly five years. Dr. Nowak-Wegrzyn started Ander on small doses of diluted peanut butter even though his allergies were considered mild. After passing this initial “food challenge” at the Jaffe Institute, Ander was cleared for increasing amounts of the mixture at home, three to four times a week.
The prognosis for Ander at 10 months is encouraging. The eczema he has had since birth has remained stable, and Ms. Kuo has been advised her son’s chances of developing a peanut allergy are slim. “I’m hopeful and relieved,” she says. “If not for the treatment, there’s a good chance Ander may have wound up with severe allergies, just as one of my daughters did.”
Updated on Jun 30, 2022 | Featured, Patient Stories
Anna Balint and Mark S. Courey, MD, after her successful surgery
In August 2015, Anna Balint fell in her New Jersey home and sustained a neck fracture. Then, during reparative surgery at a local hospital, the anesthesiologist damaged Mrs. Balint’s voice box, which left her near death.
“I turned blue from lack of oxygen,” she says, reflecting on her ordeal. Fortunately, another physician in the room was able to perform an emergency tracheostomy and saved her life. In rescuing Mrs. Balint, however, the physician damaged her larynx and left her unable to speak.
An ear, nose and throat specialist, whom she later consulted in New Jersey, told Mrs. Balint that he would not be able to restore her voice—confirming her worst fears. But he did provide a silver lining: he recommended that she see Mark S. Courey, MD, Division Chief of Laryngology and Director of the Grabscheid Voice and Swallowing Center of Mount Sinai. That set her on the path to healing.
Dr. Courey scoped Mrs. Balint’s throat and found complicated damage to the airway. He said he could bring her voice back with additional surgery to her larynx and trachea, although he could not guarantee that she would regain her pre-injury tone. To Mrs. Balint, who had once prided herself on having a lovely singing voice and enjoyed singing in church, that was a small price to pay, because at this point, the only way she could communicate was by writing her thoughts down on paper.
A six-hour operation to repair her voice box soon followed. During the surgery, Dr. Courey fixed a complex airway narrowing, performed a resection of Mrs. Balint’s trachea, and created a new tracheotomy. Although she remained in the hospital for five days following the surgery and was connected to a ventilator, Mrs. Balint noticed immediate results.
“As soon as I was out of surgery, I started to speak,” she says. “I did not have to write down everything. I was so happy! Can you imagine how many months I had to go through writing everything down before my operation with Dr. Courey?”
At first, Mrs. Balint saw Dr. Courey every two to three weeks so he could check on the progression of her healing. The ventilator made sleeping at night particularly uncomfortable. But, approximately one year after her ordeal began, Dr. Courey removed her from the machine and Mrs. Balint says she finally felt “free. Dr. Courey held my hand and said, ‘Everything is going to be all right.’ ”
Mrs. Balint says, “I still have a small hole in my neck. If I talk too much I have to assist my voice with my stomach, but I have no machine. Every day I think about Dr. Courey. Nobody else knew how to correct my voice, only he did. I would recommend him to everybody. In fact, I have already recommended two friends to see him. I am alive and can speak to my husband and grandchildren, I am very happy.”
Updated on Jun 30, 2022 | Community, Featured, Patient Stories
After treatment for ovarian cancer, Valerie Goldfein created Woman to Woman, a program at The Mount Sinai Hospital to support other gynecologic cancer patients that has expanded nationwide.
