By COLlive reporter
Dr. Stephan Kamholz, Chair of the Department of Medicine and chief of pulmonary critical care at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn, NY since May 2013, died on Thursday after being infected by Covid-19, the news website boropark24.com reported.
Dr. Kamholz is a graduate of New York University and New York Medical College. He trained in Internal Medicine and Pulmonary Diseases at Montefiore Medical Center and was board-certified in Internal Medicine, Pulmonary Diseases and Critical Care Medicine.
He previously served as Chief of the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at SUNY Downstate Medical Center as well as the Chair of the Department of Medicine. He served as Chair of the Department of Medicine at Long Island Jewish Medical Center and at North Shore University Hospital from 2001 to 2010. During that time he was also the David J. Greene Professor of Medicine at the New York University School of Medicine.
From October 2009 to May 2010, he was Professor of Medicine and Founding Academic Chair of the Department of Medicine at the Hofstra University School of Medicine in partnership with the North Shore – LIJ Health System.
His areas of expertise were lung and thoracic cancer care and pulmonary and critical care and has treated conditions such as COPD, Tuberculosis, Pneumonia, Pulmonary Embolism, Asthma and Interstitial Lung Disease.
Dr. Kamholz treated thousands of patients over the course of his career. He will be forever missed by the patients he treated and cared for over his decades in medicine, the Boro Park website said.
During the outbreak of coronavirus, Maimonidies was one of the central locations that were treating those who were infected. In an interview with the Washington Post published on April 4, Dr. Kamholz spoke about the toll that circumstances were taking.
“We’re seeing stress, seeing despair, seeing concern,” he said. “People who are appropriately capped, gowned and masked still have a concern about their own illness, and then, when they go home, they have concern about the safety of their loved ones and family. That’s a little bit different than other diseases.”
He added, “Our biggest issue is that the people we are caring for who are acutely and critically ill, it takes a very long time for them to show any signs of recovery. And some of the very first people who ended up on mechanical ventilation three, three-and-a-half weeks ago, are still on it — if they’re still alive.”
VIDEO:
Dr. Kamholz discusses his medical training, the importance of teaching residents, and the inspiring story that lead him to pursue a career in pulmonary medicine.
BDE
Truly a loss to the medical community and all he cared for and taught all these years.
🙁
Thank you for all you’ve done Dr Kamholz
one of my mentors at SUNY Downstate, I was fortunate that he led our team during my first clinical rotation in internal medicine as a 3rd year medical student. He really wanted me to go into that field but still wrote me a splendid recommendation letter for orthopedic surgery.
Zichrono livracha.