Best Neurologists for Stroke and Cerebrovascular Care in MN

Dr. Rabinstein chairs hospital neurology and neurocritical care at Mayo Clinic and serves as medical director of the Neuroscience Intensive Care Unit. He treats the sickest cerebrovascular patients in the hospital — large strokes, brain hemorrhages, ruptured and unruptured aneurysms, and patients on ventilators after severe brain injury. He led the international team that built the unruptured intracranial aneurysm treatment score, now a standard tool for deciding whether a small aneurysm found on a scan should be watched or treated ¹. He was also a co-investigator on the Lancet study showing that an AI-read ECG can flag patients likely to have the hidden atrial fibrillation behind cryptogenic stroke ², and he co-authored the European consensus on mechanical ventilation after brain injury ³.

Dr. Flemming is medical director of the Cerebral Cavernous Malformation Center of Excellence at Mayo Clinic. She takes care of patients with vascular malformations in the brain — cavernomas, AVMs, and some kinds of unusual aneurysms — where the hardest question is usually whether to operate or observe. She led the first large natural-history study of cavernoma bleeding risk ⁴, contributed to the Lancet Neurology meta-analysis that pooled every patient ever reported with an untreated cavernoma ⁵, and co-wrote the Angioma Alliance consensus guidelines that now steer treatment decisions internationally ⁶. Her earlier work on vertebrobasilar aneurysms and intracranial vascular malformations is still cited by neurosurgeons choosing between open and endovascular repair ⁷⁸.

Dr. Khan is an associate professor of neurology at Mayo Clinic focused on acute ischemic stroke. His clinical work centers on thrombectomy — the emergency procedure that pulls a clot out of a blocked brain artery — and on figuring out why a stroke happened when the obvious causes come up empty. He helped show that outpatient cardiac monitoring finds atrial fibrillation in a surprising share of "cryptogenic" strokes, a finding that has changed how long patients are monitored after discharge ⁹. He also co-authored one of the early case series on endovascular treatment for tandem occlusions, where two arteries on the same side are blocked at once ¹⁰, and contributed to work on blood-based oxidative-stress markers that may one day help emergency teams decide who still has brain tissue worth saving ¹¹¹².

Dr. Keser is an associate professor of neurology at Mayo Clinic who sees patients with cervical artery dissection — a tear in the lining of a neck artery that is one of the leading causes of stroke in people under 50. He first-authored the 2022 review that many neurologists now reach for when deciding whether dissection patients need a blood thinner, antiplatelet therapy, or a stent ¹³. His imaging research uses diffusion tensor MRI to map how stroke damages the brain's white-matter connections, and how those connections recover with rehab — including brain-controlled exoskeleton therapy ¹⁴¹⁵.

Dr. Ramanan directs the Alzheimer's Disease Treatment Clinic at Mayo Clinic, and much of his work sits at the intersection of cerebrovascular disease and dementia. If you or a family member are worried about memory problems that appeared after a stroke or TIA, he is the kind of specialist who can sort out whether it is vascular cognitive impairment, Alzheimer's, or both. He co-authored a 2023 Neurology study showing how few real-world patients actually meet criteria for the new anti-amyloid infusions — many are disqualified by small strokes and microbleeds on their MRI ¹⁶. His earlier genetics work on Alzheimer's and Parkinson's helped map which gene pathways drive neurodegeneration ¹⁷¹⁸.

Dr. Savica is a professor of neurology at Mayo Clinic and directs the Young-Onset Parkinson's Disease Clinic. His strongest relevance for cerebrovascular readers is on the diagnostic side: telling apart Parkinson's, Lewy body dementia, and vascular parkinsonism, where a series of small strokes mimics Parkinson's but will not respond to the same medications. He first-authored the paper that reframed when Parkinson disease actually starts ¹⁹ and contributed to the most widely cited modern incidence estimate for the condition in North America ²⁰. He was also part of the systematic review that set current accuracy standards for diagnosing dementia with Lewy bodies ²¹.