1 /5 Sara Franca: On August 17, 2023 the doctor Anthony Catapano was in the emergency room
As a critical care nurse for the past 7 years, it is my professional opinion that there was a delay of care in my grandmothers unfortunate stroke and death. She displayed classic symptoms of a large vessel occlusion such as altered state of consciousness, the hemiplegia on her left side and the gaze deviation. All of which were documented on her arrival to the ER at Mount Sinai, however they failed to call a Stroke alert or Code Fast to prepare the stroke team and CT Scan on her arrival. Not only did the paramedics fail to alert the hospital en route, but the providers in the hospital also failed to identify classic LVO symptoms. The American Heart Association recommends a CT Scan in less than 20 minutes of arrival to ED with stroke symptoms, it took them over 45 minutes to bring her down and begin the CT scan on her. She arrived at 20:47 by ambulance and they began scanning her, head to toe at 21:33. Per her medical records, there was no FAST-ED scale done on her arrival, until 23:29 when the radiologist finally called the ED doctor at 22:38, more than an hour after they had finished scanning her to tell him there was an occlusion of the Right Internal carotid artery. After 22:38, you see the ED doctor start putting in stroke orders, orders that should have been initiated on her arrival to not delay care, and the Neuro Team was finally activated at 23:21. Mount Sinai as a "Comprehensive Stroke Center" should be well versed on the classic signs and symptoms of a stroke and also know that the standard of care is 90 minutes or less, door to needle time for intervention. However, it took them almost 4 hours to do any intervention on my grandmother, she was taken to cath lab for a mechanical thrombectomy at 00:35. Their untimely diagnosis resulted in her being out of the window to receive thrombolytics that could have broken up the clot, before proceeding with the thrombectomy. They incorrectly charted her Last Known Well being at noon, when it was 30 minutes prior to her arriving to their ED. The medical care provided at Mount Sinai was negligent and failed to meet the standards of competent medical care. Her clinical outcome could have been different if a timely diagnosis would have been made, time is brain, and she was rapidly loosing brain tissue with all the delays. Had she been treated appropriately, there could have been a chance for recovery, as she arrived in the hospital in less than an hour after her last known well. My family, and especially my grandfather have suffered a great loss resulting in emotional distress and loss of companionship for him.