Dr. Preethi Chakravart Sridhar, MD

I was a patient of Dr. Sridhar’s for about 2.5 years. I’ll preface this post by saying that the overwhelming majority of our doctor-patient relationship was extremely positive. I always enjoyed my appointments and felt respected. She truly listened and cared. I was her first type 1 diabetic patient to follow a very low carb diet (~20g/day), and I really admired that she was eager to learn how I achieved tight control rather than being strictly opposed to anything but ADA guidelines, as many endocrinologists would do. In fact, she even took notes during our appointments and soon recommended the low carb lifestyle to other patients. She spends more time with patients than is typical, and I never felt rushed. The office itself was also friendly and responsive. Our relationship recently took a dramatic turn when I fell very ill unexpectedly. I didn’t have clear symptoms, but my sky high blood sugars were a red flag something was wrong. It was my first time ever being hospitalized for… diabetes, and it was important to me that Dr, Sridhar oversaw my care, so I went to El Camino Hospital upon her recommendation, the only hospital with which she is associated. The diabetes care in the hospital was horrendous. Despite being hospitalized for diabetes, in 7.5 hours, they only checked my blood glucose ONCE, and that even was only upon requesting for a BG test. While the nurses’ actions are certainly not Dr. Sridhar’s fault, this experience made me realize that it really is important that your physician is associated with a good hospital. I had never considered this when choosing an endocrinologist given I never imagined I’d need to be hospitalized, as I haven’t been since diagnosis when I was kid. However, the tipping point for me was how I was treated by Dr. Sridhar when I was in the hospital. We were having trouble identifying the source of my high blood sugars, and another physician from her practice suggested perhaps I was just not giving insulin. Dr. Sridhar stood there entirely silent and didn’t say a single word to defend me, despite that I’ve had a1cs in the 5s since I’ve been her patient. Clearly, this was not the case, and it was absolutely inexcusable for her to passively stand there, even after I told the other physician that this was absolutely not the case. At this very moment I lost all trust and respect for her as a physician. When things got hard, she simply gave up and said this must be self-induced. She took it to the next step and had the nerve to drop me as a patient in the hospital, exactly the moment when I needed a physician advocate the most. Luckily, I quickly found a new endocrinologist at Stanford, and she ran testing that had been overlooked by Dr. Sridhar and her practice. We were able to find the root cause of the high blood sugars, which was so rare that even she had not seen this in her ~20 years practicing endocrinology. I’m currently undergoing treatment and getting much better, thankfully. I hope this review raises a red flag, as you want a physician that will be there for you at your best and worst moments, and you cannot count on Dr. Sridhar to do that. I always thought I could, and I was wrong.