Mother of Stray Shooting Victim Thanks Lincoln Hospital Medical Team
Nov 25, 2009
Dr. Narayan Sundaresan, Chief of
Neurosurgery at Lincoln Hospital
with Gemma Vasquez, mother of
Vada Vasquez.
The mother of 15-year-old Vada Vasquez publicly thanked the neurosurgical team at HHC’s Lincoln Hospital on Wednesday for the remarkable surgery that saved her daughter’s life, after she was struck in the head by a stray bullet on November 16th.
“It’s a great Thanksgiving, it’s going to be a good Christmas, it’s going to be a good everything, ” said a greatly relieved Gemma Vasquez, as she stood with the neurosurgery team in a conference room at Lincoln Hospital.
The bullet which struck Vada drove skull fragments into the left temporal lobe of her brain, the area that controls speech. Thankfully, Dr. Narayan Sundaresan, the surgeon who treated her and patched up her skull, believes that, with therapy, she will overcome any lingering speech impairment.
“I expect she will make a full functional recovery,” said Dr. Sundaresan.
Contact: Ian Michaels (HHC) (212) 788-3339.
About Lincoln Hospital
Lincoln Medical and Mental Health Center, located at 234 E. 149th Street in the Bronx, is a 347-bed, acute care level 1 trauma center with the busiest single site Emergency Department in the region. The Hospital emphasizes primary care and specialty medicine and utilizes the latest advances in medical science. Lincoln Hospital is a member of the Generations+/Northern Manhattan Health Network, a healthcare conglomerate which is part of the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation.
About HHC
The New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation (HHC) is a $6.7 billion integrated healthcare delivery system with its own 420,000 member health plan, MetroPlusHealth, and is the largest municipal healthcare organization in the country. HHC serves 1.4 million New Yorkers every year and more than 475,000 are uninsured. HHC provides medical, mental health and substance abuse services through its 11 acute care hospitals, five skilled nursing facilities, six large diagnostic and treatment centers and more than 70 community based clinics. HHC Health and Home Care also provides in-home services for New Yorkers. HHC was the 2008 recipient of the National Quality Forum and The Joint Commission’s John M. Eisenberg Award for Innovation in Patient Safety and Quality. For more information, visit www.nychhc.org/hhc or find us on facebook.com/NYCHealthSystem or twitter.com/NYCHealthSystem.