1. Departments and Offices

Department of Anesthesiology

The Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai has been the home of preeminent clinicians, educators, leaders, and innovators since its founding in 1950. As part of the prestigious Mount Sinai Health System, it has been consistently ranked in the top 25 departments for training and research by Doximity, an online networking service for medical professionals. The Department comprises more than 160 faculty members, 40 nurse anesthetists, and over 200 trainees, making us one of the largest anesthesiology training programs in the United States.

We provide comprehensive services across five distinct hospitals within the Mount Sinai Health System: The Mount Sinai Hospital, Mount Sinai Morningside, Mount Sinai West, Mount Sinai Queens, and Mount Sinai Brooklyn. We also provide anesthesiology services to many office-based procedural sites and ambulatory surgical centers, while our Pain Management Division sees patients and performs procedures in four distinct ambulatory practice sites.

The Department’s mission encompasses three pillars: exceptional patient care, comprehensive medical education, and innovative research. We maintain the highest standards of safety, quality, and patient experience across all facilities and service lines.

Our integrated approach to educating the next generation of physicians includes hands-on clinical practice, advanced simulation training, and classroom instruction. Through direct involvement in a high volume of complex cases, residents and fellows gain invaluable experience managing heart, lung, liver, kidney, and bowel transplants, as well as diverse cardiac procedures. Our residency programs develop outstanding anesthesiologists who become leaders in the field, while our fellowship programs offer training opportunities unmatched in their scope and depth.

Building on these clinical strengths, we have a robust research program that drives improvements in perioperative care through an innovative departmental data warehouse, while simultaneously advancing medical education methodologies.

Our faculty's expertise is widely recognized, with many serving as editors and major contributors to several of the most highly regarded textbooks, including Miller’s Anesthesia; Clinical Anesthesia; Kaplan’s Cardiac Anesthesia; Anesthesia Equipment; Chestnut’s Obstetric Anesthesia: Principles and Practice; and the eponymous Cohen’s Comprehensive Thoracic Anesthesia.

Meet the Chair

Our Divisions

The Division of Cardiothoracic Anesthesia has a long and rich history of providing cutting-edge, compassionate care to patients undergoing open heart surgery and electrophysiology procedures. The Division’s faculty are all fellowship-trained, board-certified or board eligible in Advanced Perioperative Transesophageal Echocardiography and Adult Cardiothoracic Anesthesiology. We provide anesthesia care to more than 2,000 adult and pediatric patients undergoing major operative procedures annually at The Mount Sinai Hospital and Mount Sinai Morningside.

The Mount Sinai Health System is a center of excellence and major referral center for aortic reconstruction and mitral valve repair, which account for nearly half of the Division’s surgical volume. We are one of the few centers in the world to routinely perform Ross procedures that use the pulmonic valve to repair a diseased aortic valve. We are also a destination for heart transplant, lung transplant, implantation of ventricular assist devices, extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, as well as coronary artery bypass surgeries. Annually, we provide anesthesia to more than 2,500 adult and pediatric patients undergoing diagnostic and interventional electrophysiological and catheterization procedures, and over 1,000 transcatheter aortic valve replacements and mitral valve clips.

Our thoracic surgery team operates on more than 700 patients annually, the vast majority of which are performed using minimally invasive video-assisted thoracoscopic techniques. The associated 31-bed Cardiac Surgery Intensive Care Unit is staffed by five dedicated anesthesiology-intensivists with Certificates of Special Qualification in Critical Care Medicine from The American Board of Anesthesiology, as well as a team of other specialist physicians and physician assistants.

We have had a dedicated Division of Liver Transplant Anesthesia since 1989, when the first liver transplant was performed at The Mount Sinai Hospital. Mount Sinai is an international leader in liver transplantation. We are among the highest volume centers in the world having performed more than 3,500 transplants since the inception of the Liver Transplantation Program, and more than 175 transplants annually.

Our team has always been on the cutting edge of intraoperative management and created one of the first fellowships in liver transplant anesthesia. As a leader in the field, we were early adopters of routine transesophageal echocardiographic monitoring, blood product administration guided by use of thromboelastography, novel approaches to the management of vasoplegia, and intense perioperative integration into the listing process and perioperative management. The team’s research productivity has been highlighted at national and international meetings.

The Division of Neuroanesthesia provides care for approximately 1,500 neurosurgical procedures annually. We perform a wide variety of procedures in four dedicated neurosurgical operating rooms at The Mount Sinai Hospital, two dedicated operating rooms at Mount Sinai West, and interventional radiology at both sites. Major procedures routinely performed include multilevel spinal fusions, vertebral body tethering, skull base and intracranial tumor resection, and cerebrovascular repair. We have a very busy neuroradiology service that participates in an aggressive interventional stroke management program, and frequently performs procedures that combine open surgery, imaging, and interventional approaches. We work closely with The Mount Sinai Hospital Department of Neurosurgery, which has developed national and international reputations for its operative expertise in these areas, their ingenious use of 3D imaging technology, and implantation of devices used to treat depression and Parkinson’s disease.

The Division of Neuroanesthesia actively leads clinical research to enhance patient safety and improve outcomes. We reported the first use of adenosine-induced asystole to facilitate the surgical management of a basilar tip aneurysm. Our other research and academic interests include anesthesia equipment and delivery systems, use of video-laryngoscopy and other airway devices, simulation, strategies for selective hypothermic cerebral and organ protection, and advanced techniques for intraoperative neurophysiologic monitoring. Physicians interested in this specialty are encouraged to apply to our Neuroanesthesia Fellowship at The Mount Sinai Hospital.

The Division of Obstetric Anesthesia provides anesthesia care for approximately 10,000 patients per year, of whom roughly 25 percent are high risk. We staff our two labor floors at The Mount Sinai Hospital and Mount Sinai West, with a combination of attendings, fellows, residents, and nurse anesthetists.

Approximately 90 percent of all patients receive labor analgesia. Most parturients receive epidural analgesia or a combined epidural-spinal technique. As a tertiary referral center, we care for a large number of patients with structural heart disease, coagulopathies, preeclampsia, and placenta abruption, placenta previa, and placenta accreta.

We offer two obstetrical anesthesia fellowships at The Mount Sinai Hospital and Mount Sinai West and have a robust research program currently conducting a variety of clinical studies, many of which have industry or grant funding.

The Division of Orthopedic Anesthesia offers our residents the opportunity to administer a wide variety of regional anesthetic techniques. We routinely perform upper extremity blocks for shoulder, elbow, and hand surgeries, and lower extremity blocks for procedures on the foot and ankle, using the latest ultrasound-guided technology. We place indwelling catheters to provide in-hospital as well as ambulatory postoperative analgesia and facilitate rehabilitation. For hip and knee procedures, we use epidural, spinal, and combined epidural-spinals, and adductor canal blocks as indicated, offering patients alternatives to traditional general anesthesia. Most recently, this service has expanded into the Peakpoint Midtown West Ambulatory Surgery Center where many joint replacements and shoulder surgeries are now performed as outpatient procedures. 

The Division of Pain Management and Integrative Medicine physicians utilize traditional and complementary therapies to decrease pain that may be caused by injury, cancer, or other chronic and/or acute ailments, with the main goal to improve quality of life and overall function. We have more than 7,000 outpatient visits and perform more than 4,000 interventional procedures annually to treat a variety of conditions, including spine disease, arthritic pain, migraine headache, and neuropathic pain of any kind.

The Division has physicians at the five hospital sites we staff, as well as 5 East 98th Street, 200 West 57th Street, Cadman Plaza in Brooklyn, and the ambulatory practice site at Mount Sinai Brooklyn.

The Division of Pediatric Anesthesia manages approximately 2,000 pediatric cases annually. All pediatric surgical subspecialties are represented, including general surgery, cardiothoracic surgery, otolaryngology, urology, gynecology, orthopedic surgery, ophthalmology, oral surgery, dental surgery, plastic surgery, neurosurgery, and organ transplantation. In addition, we provide anesthesia services for non-operating room procedures such as bone marrow aspirations and biopsies, lumbar punctures for chemotherapy, radiologic procedures (MRI, CT scan, nuclear medicine, and interventional), and radiation therapy. We also offer various modalities for postoperative pain control in conjunction with the Pain Management Practice.

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