Joining Central New York‘s first and only comprehensive stroke center are two physicians with expertise in interventional clot retrieval.

The addition of Grahame Gould, MD, and Hesham Masoud, MBBCh, strengthens the team of professionals who provide round-the-clock stroke care at Upstate University Hospital. They join Amar Swarnkar, MD, in providing endovascular neurosurgery, including mechanical thrombolysis. This is a crucial therapy for patients suffering ischemic strokes. Swiftly locating and removing a brain clot improves the patient‘s odds of survival and recovery.

Upstate's stroke team earned "Honor Roll - Elite" status in U.S. News & World Report's annual Best Hospitals publication for 2016. This designation is for hospitals whose door-to-needle time is less than an hour at least 75 percent of the time, for at least four consecutive quarters. Door-to-needle time refers to the time from a stroke patient's arrival at the Emergency Department until he or she receives clot-busting tissue plasminogen activator, or tPA, if appropriate.

Upstate‘s comprehensive stroke center, lead by neurologist Gene Latorre, MD, includes:

• a multidisciplinary team of neurologists, neurosurgeons, interventional radiologists and rehabilitation therapists;


• the use of clot-busting tPA for ischemic strokes and catheter-based therapy for clot retrieval;


• three levels of specialized care on a dedicated hospital floor, from nurses with neuroscience expertise;


• stroke rehabilitation that begins during hospitalization;


• state-of-the-art neurovascular and endovascular procedures for aneurysms and hemorrhagic strokes;


• telemedicine capabilities to treat stroke patients in rural hospitals; and


• active participation in multiple clinical research trials.

Both Gould and Masoud are new to Central New York.

Grahame Gould, MD

Gould, a native of New Orleans, comes to Upstate from Thomas Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia. He specializes in endovascular and cerebrovascular neurosurgery.

His medical degree is from Yale University School of Medicine. He was chief resident in his 7^th year of neurological surgery residency at Yale-New Haven Hospital in Connecticut, and then he completed a fellowship in endovascular neurosurgery at Thomas Jefferson.

Gould is the author of chapters in text books including “Operative Neurosurgical Techniques” and “The Comprehensive Treatment of the Aging Spine: Minimally Invasive and Advanced Techniques” and has been published in a variety of medical journals. He and six other inventers hold a patent on an intraventricular brain-cooling catheter.

Hesham Masoud, MBBCh

Masoud has expertise in endovascular surgical neuroradiology and vascular neurology. He comes to Upstate from Boston Medical Center and the Boston University School of Medicine, where he was an assistant professor of neurology.

Masoud received his medical degree from Ain Shams University in Cairo. He completed his internship and residency in neurology at Case Western Reserve School of Medicine in Cleveland, where he was selected to serve as chief resident his senior year. He then went on to complete a combined fellowship in vascular neurology and endovascular surgical neuroradiology at Boston Medical Center.

He lectures and writes about acute stroke therapy, intracranial stenting, endovascular management of cerebral aneurysms, neuroimaging of intracerebral hemorrhage and other topics.

In addition to the clinical care they provide to adult patients, both physicians have faculty appointments and will be involved in research as well as teaching the next generation of physicians and surgeons.

The presence of Gould, a neurosurgeon, Masoud, a stroke neurologist, and Swarnkar, a neuroradiologist -- all three with expertise in acute stroke rescue therapy -- highlights the three disciplinary approach to endovascular management of stroke at Upstate.