Vascular Neurology & Stroke Specialists in Florida

Professor of Clinical Neurology, Chief of the Stroke Program at University of Miami Hospital, and Director of the Patrick Cesarano Neurovascular Laboratory, affiliated with Jackson Health System.

Dr. Koch runs one of South Florida's highest-volume stroke programs. His clinical practice covers acute ischemic stroke, TIA, hemorrhagic stroke, and the neurological complications of systemic illness. He has a particular interest in how vascular disease intersects with conditions outside classic stroke risk factors, including how immune-mediated brain edema behaves on advanced MRI. A 2001 study on eclampsia using diffusion-weighted imaging documented both cytotoxic and vasogenic edema patterns in a woman who went on to develop cerebral infarction, contributing to how neurologists use MRI to distinguish reversible injury from permanent damage ¹. His laboratory work has examined neuroprotective strategies in focal ischemia, including research comparing the effects of induced hypothermia applied during versus after an ischemic event; the authors noted those findings could inform future clinical trial design for acute stroke ². His group also published on the mechanisms driving ischemic stroke specifically in HIV-infected patients, finding that vasculitis and hypercoagulable states were relatively common causes in that population and that antiretroviral exposure did not substantially change stroke etiology ³.

Professor of Neurology, Medical Director of the UF Health Comprehensive Stroke Program, and Program Director of the Vascular Neurology Fellowship at UF Health Jacksonville, affiliated with Shands Hospital Gainesville.

Dr. Silliman directs UF Health's comprehensive stroke program in Jacksonville and trains the fellowship-level neurologists who will staff stroke programs across the region. His academic work has focused on two parts of stroke care that often get less attention than the acute intervention: how to get tPA to patients who live far from a stroke center, and what happens to patients after they survive. A 2003 study he led in Stroke showed that a helicopter transport program linking rural areas to the stroke center extended access to thrombolytic therapy to patients who otherwise would have arrived too late to be treated, a systems-level finding that has influenced how rural stroke networks are designed ⁴. He has also published on post-stroke swallowing problems, which affect a substantial share of stroke survivors and can lead to aspiration pneumonia and malnutrition. A 2006 study found dysphagia was common at hospital admission and was tied to worse nutritional status ⁵, and a later randomized trial he contributed to tested whether exercise-based swallowing therapy (McNeill Dysphagia Therapy) outperformed neuromuscular electrical stimulation for post-stroke dysphagia, finding that the exercise approach produced greater reduction in swallowing severity ⁶. He also contributed to a systematic review on outcomes in patients who need both carotid artery stenting and coronary bypass surgery, a complex combined presentation that stroke neurologists sometimes manage ⁷.

Clinical Professor of Neurology at Mayo Clinic Florida in Jacksonville.

Dr. Meschia has an h-index of 85 and has published more than 670 works, which places him among the most prolific stroke researchers in the country. His work covers stroke genetics, unusual stroke causes like intracranial artery dissection and CNS vasculitis, and the long-running CREST trial comparing carotid stenting to endarterectomy. The CREST trial, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, was a large randomized study that found no meaningful difference in the composite outcome of stroke, heart attack, or death between the two procedures for symptomatic or asymptomatic carotid stenosis — though stenting carried a higher periprocedural stroke risk and endarterectomy a slightly higher heart attack risk ⁸. For patients facing a carotid procedure, this distinction still shapes individual decision-making. He also contributed to a 2015 Lancet Neurology review on intracranial artery dissection covering diagnosis, pathophysiology, and management — a condition that causes stroke in younger patients and is easy to miss ⁹. His group's analysis of 101 patients with primary CNS vasculitis in Annals of Neurology identified key diagnostic and prognostic patterns in a rare disease where early recognition and treatment can prevent serious neurological outcomes or death ¹⁰. His research on shared genetic risk between ischemic stroke and coronary artery disease, published in Stroke, found substantial genetic overlap particularly for the large artery stroke subtype — relevant for patients who have both conditions in their family history ¹¹.

Affiliated with Sarasota Memorial Hospital, HCA Florida Sarasota Doctors Hospital, and Intercoastal Medical Group in Sarasota.

Dr. Concha practices vascular neurology in Sarasota with affiliations at multiple hospital systems on the Gulf Coast. His published research includes work on anticoagulation reversal, which is a central problem when stroke patients were on blood thinners when their intracranial hemorrhage began. He contributed to the ANNEXA-4 trial of andexanet alfa, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, which showed that in patients with major bleeding from factor Xa inhibitors (like rivaroxaban or apixaban), andexanet treatment substantially reduced anti-factor Xa activity and 82% of patients had good or excellent hemostasis at 12 hours ¹². A 2023 final study report in Circulation extended those findings with longer follow-up data ¹³. This matters directly for stroke patients: a growing share of the population is on these newer blood thinners for atrial fibrillation, and knowing how to reverse them safely during an intracranial bleed has become a core stroke neurology skill.

Chair of the Department of Neurology, Olemberg Family Chair of Neurology, Chief of Neurology at Jackson Health System, and Medical Director of the Jackson Memorial Hospital Comprehensive Stroke Center.

Dr. Romano leads neurology at one of the largest academic health systems in Florida. Jackson Memorial Hospital's comprehensive stroke center handles a high volume of complex cases, including patients transferred from smaller facilities who need thrombectomy or specialized hemorrhagic stroke care. As both department chair and medical director of the stroke center, his role spans clinical leadership, quality improvement, and oversight of the full stroke care pathway from door to treatment. He has an h-index of 38 and has published more than 320 works across his career.

Affiliated with Mayo Clinic Florida in Jacksonville and AdventHealth Orlando.

Dr. Mauricio practices at Mayo Clinic Florida's neurovascular program in Jacksonville. Her published research includes work on hemorrhagic stroke critical care, specifically a study on blood transfusion as a predictor of hospital mortality in patients with aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage, a stroke subtype caused by a ruptured aneurysm. That 2012 study in Neurocritical Care found blood transfusion was independently associated with increased in-hospital death in this population, a finding relevant to how intensivists manage anemia in the neurovascular ICU ¹⁴.