Patients from around the region and the country come to Maimonides Medical Center seeking the experience and skill of the hospital's cardiac and vascular surgeons, orthopedists, spine surgeons, pediatric surgeons and numerous other surgical specialists. They come because the Departments of Surgery and Orthopedics at Maimonides have for decades set the standards for outstanding surgical care.

When a physical condition or injury requires surgery, Maimonides rises to the call. It has developed centers of excellence in surgical care and augmented them with outstanding pre-operative and post-operative services to ensure the best possible recovery for patients.

As Chairman of the Department of Surgery, Joseph N. Cunningham, Jr., MD, oversees and helps maintain high standards of care in each of the department's 12 divisions: Cardiothoracic Surgery, Colorectal Surgery, Dentistry, General Surgery, Head and Neck, Neurosurgery, Ophthalmology, Otolaryngology, Pediatric Surgery, Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, Urology and Vascular Surgery.

Each of these divisions is led by experienced physicians who are widely respected by peers in their specialties. They routinely appear on published lists of best doctors. They are repeatedly invited to be guest lecturers, present seminars and host presentations at national and international meetings; and their research and development of innovative surgical procedures has been covered in many prestigious medical journals.

These surgeons are lured to Maimonides in part by the availability of high-tech equipment and modern facilities. The medical center is currently building new operating rooms as well as a new Surgical Intensive Care Unit (SICU), where acutely ill patients benefit from constant and close monitoring from physicians specially trained in critical care medicine. The unit is equipped with advanced technology, including telemetry monitors at the bedside as well as at nursing stations so that each patient is under 24-hour observation.

The SICU offers a team approach to critical care which involves collaboration among physicians, unit directors, residents, nurses and other professionals. The goal is to help patients and families through life-threatening events and to help patients recover so that they can resume their lives outside the hospital.