Yohannes Melaku, MD, center, Critical Care Physician, is back to work after experiencing a stroke while visiting his patients in the Mount Sinai South Nassau Intensive Care Unit. He is joined by his neurology care team, from left, Joseph Merims, RN, Interventional Radiology; Jonathan Sisti, MD, Cerebrovascular and Endovascular Neurosurgeon; M. Travis Caton, Jr., MD, Interventional Neuroradiologist; and Robert Croes, RN, Assistant Nurse Manager, Interventional Radiology.
One Friday last October began like any other for Yohannes Melaku, MD, 54. The Mount Sinai intensivist and nephrologist was caring for patients in the hospital’s ICU when a sudden wave of nausea hit him. As he walked to the restroom, his left leg felt unusually heavy.
“My left leg was dragging like I was dragging a heavy rock,” he recalled. “While I was in the bathroom, the heaviness in my left leg got worse…I was shuffling. I thought it was something transient and that it would pass, but my leg felt heavier and heavier. Then this must be serious.”
As he began feeling “cloudy,” he said he yanked on the emergency pull cord to call for help. ICU personnel pounded on the restroom door and then unlocked it to render aid to their colleague, rushing him to the Emergency Department.
A CT and MRI confirmed the diagnosis: a stroke in the right carotid artery caused by a blood clot. That day, Dr. Melaku had become one of the nearly 700,000 Americans to experience a stroke each year.
Within minutes, doctors rushed him to the hospital’s Radiology Department, where M. Travis Caton Jr., MD, Assistant Professor of Neurosurgery at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sina and an interventional neuroradiologist, and Jonathan Sisti, MD, Assistant Professor of Neurosurgery and a cerebrovascular and endovascular neurosurgeon at the Mount Sinai Cerebrovascular Center, performed a thrombectomy. During the minimally invasive procedure, they guided a catheter equipped with a specialized tool through Dr. Melaku’s blood vessels to remove the clot and restore blood flow to his brain, reducing the risk of permanent tissue damage or death.
“He had a complete occlusion of his right internal carotid artery, which normally provides blood flow to 40-45 percent of the brain,” said Dr. Sisti. “Historically, that diagnosis—without thrombectomy—carries a mortality rate between 40-60 percent.”
After recovering from the stroke, Dr. Melaku is back in the ICU—this time, not as a patient, but as a medical provider with a new outlook on illness, patient care, and life.
“The time from the start of symptoms to intervention is extremely important,” he said. “As soon as the procedure was over, I regained all my function. I am 100 percent and have no residual weakness. If I had not gotten care in time, I would have been clinically disabled. It would have been disastrous.”
Alan Wong, DO, Chief Medical Officer and Senior Vice President at Mount Sinai South Nassau, echoed Dr. Melaku’s assessment.
“Behind every neurological diagnosis is a patient whose life has changed in an instant,” Dr. Wong said. “Expanding our services allows us to bring cutting-edge treatments and multidisciplinary expertise together to deliver the highest level of care.”
While Dr. Melaku’s medical training helped him to promptly recognize the seriousness of his symptoms, he said physicians can become desensitized to seeing illness through daily exposure and feel invulnerable.
“As physicians, we think of ourselves as invincible. Sickness is someone else’s problem,” he said. “It could happen to anyone—irrespective of your identity as a physician.”
The stroke also helped him to realize the importance of demonstrating compassion toward patients.
“The doctors followed up with me to see how I was,” he said. “I realized personally that the idea of connecting with patients means a lot.”
Since the stroke, Dr. Melaku is maintaining tighter control of his blood pressure. Besides that, he has taken his exercise routine up a notch, dropped a few pounds, and cut down on salt.
“I’m probably one of the luckiest persons in the world,” he said. “The doctors and nurses really impressed me. They are highly skilled and very caring…This experience helped me appreciate the power of modern medicine.”