Sanjeev Vithal Kothare, MD

We finally found a doctor who cares and understands my son’s complex and rare condition. We are very thankful for Dr Kothare!

Our youngest son was having seizures. We brought him in to see Dr. Kothare and it was immediately obvious that he was overbooked. Irresponsibly so. The waiting room was teeming with patients, the staff was busy and distracted, and upon seeing the doctor, we were quickly rushed through the process without much substantive Q&A for a situation as serious as ours. I've had more time spent on from other physicians when getting a Z-Pac. In the short discourse we did have, I found myself having to stop him and clarify his words as he rapidly set off through a soliloquy of very arcane medical terminology that would prove confusing for anyone coming to neurological specialist for the first time. What appeared to be a naturally fast cadence coupled with his obvious scheduling problems, turned what should have been a basic first meeting into a truly unimpressive display of logistical acumen and poor bedside manner. He didn't spend nearly enough time trying to understand our situation as most… responsible doctors might, instead we left feeling more confused about our son's situation. We video taped our son's seizures and emailed them to him the following week. To our surprise he was very responsive and asked us to immediately come in for an EEG, and to his credit he allowed us to skip through his irritatingly dense waiting room and go right into the procedure. Once inside, however, things seemed to return to our first experience. He entered the room as our EEG tech performed the procedure on our son while he was eating. With a mouth filled with food, he kept looking at the data on the screen and saying things like "wow" without even addressing us our clarifying what wow might mean. As you can imagine that is not the behavior you're looking for from an "impressive" scientist. I've received more thoughtful service at a DMV to be honest. After the procedure we were asked to sit in the over crowded waiting room for a few hours, and when we finally went back in to discuss the results, the RN mistakenly asked us a series of questions about our son's recovery. We reminded her that we were new patients and that we had just that morning come in. She seemed confused, and when Kothare appeared, he devised a plan and diagnosis for our son at a very accelerated clip, that for even someone without medical training, felt presumptive and hastily conceived. But we listened and began our son on an aggressive epilepsy drug treatment even before having an MRI. The treatment seemed excessive and ill-contrived so we decided to go to another specialist in Manhattan who, after a much more appropriate and ever-more human first appointment filled with empathy and concern and questions, proved that our suspicion that Kothare's rush to judgment was indeed ill-advised. We eventually were put us on a much more thought-through, and bespoke treatment to get to the bottom of our son's illness and we're very thankful that we trusted our instincts and moved on from Khotare's care. Look, he could very well be a brilliant physician as some have said on this page, but perhaps he could run a tighter ship and focus a bit more on the basic mechanics of his practice and his inter-personal dynamic, as that tends to matter almost as much as talent. If you have a serious issue and the means to shop around, I would most certainly not start here.

BECAUSE YOU WILL NEVER GET AN ANSWER. He is great at calling but always the same come on in, though I had already been there and he promised he would give us answers the first appointment but then when we got there he said he would give us answers at the next appointment after going to a sleep study months later after concerns were not answered by a doctor he said he trained and was ill equipped to help my babies. (well he trained our previous doc and if that doc isn't equipped then what does that say for him?). He never showed for the following appointment which his office had no idea he wasn't going to show for and had nagged me repeatedly to make sure to show on time. We arrived to an appointment that he was coming in specially for us but he wasn't. His office appologized and refunded our copay and let us see a neuro who was nice but didn't know the history and kept referring us back to Kothare. Kothare said he had jury duty but you know you have that at least a week plus so… him not telling me didn't seem the truth. We had driven hours to see him. I had questions regarding the sleep study tech days before which when I tried addressing this Jamacian female tech she was stern, short and not wanting to help do anything that would inconvience her but that would my child. The head tech said she doesn't like little ones. This woman demanded walking us out but the head tech told her to back up and leave us alone and that he would walk us out. He expressed his concern for how she did not fix the probes that were not lit on my childs machine. I simply had a question and it was all on video so you would think she would have been nicer because I questioned her because she said oops I make mistake I have to fix, (the probes were lit red then not at all and the head tech said she should have reinserted all of them but she did not and it is all on video and can't be denied). We every right to be concerned about this but our concern was ignored by them. Days following my daughter was grabbing her chest over her heart and her left arm and said she had pain in her middle back. This could be reflux but my call was ignored and not returned and at this point we did not have a doctor because we knew too much damage had been done and his specialty though difficult to find didn't make us feel safe when he yelled at me over the phone. He told me days after missing his appointment that he is not apologizing for not showing because he didn't know...umm we all know there is the possibility but he seemed not wanting to do that which I could care less I wanted answers to my questions I had since my previous appointment they were ignored because he said he needed the full picture though not sure how he could have gotten that when his sleep tech didn't do her job correctly. So when ever I called days following for a copy of the sleep study since I filled out the proper forms for a copy I was told all sorts of lies and it wasn't sent for days following his last call where he told me if I wanted my questions answered I would have to drive back there the 5 hrs! Really who treats children this way.

As the parent of a child with a complicated medication condition that persisted for seven years undiagnosed by many other supposedly good doctors, I am as humbled as a person can possibly be to have had the good fortune to find Dr. Kothare. He has taken actions that are keeping my child alive and VASTLY improving his quality of life. He spent a great deal of time asking the right questions at our first appointment (to those who said he was late for their appointment: perhaps he was diagnosing a different patient's complex medical situation. I would take that over a neurotically punctual doctor without a clue any time. In fact, I have had to leave several of those rote, process-driven doctors to keep my child alive.). After our first appointment, he sent my child to multiple other specialists, did extensive testing to rule out possible causes of his symptoms, and most importantly, Dr. Kothare makes himself available by phone on an as-needed basis to not just me, but also to the… multiple other physicians who have been involved in my child's care. He doesn't make us come in for appointments needlessly when the information can be shared by phone. He saw in total what other doctors hadn't seen, because they wanted to address particular little pieces of his symptoms, but they never addressed the posssibility that as a whole, they told an important story. Dr. Kothare put it all together for us. The diagnosis is scary, but we know what we're dealing with now, and it all finally makes sense. He is making sure we stay on top of treatments, is expediting things for us whenever possible, and is essentially my son's lifeline. in addition, his team is responsive and helpful. They get messages to Dr. Kothare promptly, and he calls me back promptly every single time I truly need his help. It actually makes me cry to think about what we would do without Dr. Kothare. I work in health care, and he is one in a million ... truly a gift from God.

This doctor is very irresponsible. When my daughter has emergency situations and we need to ask his suggestions about increasing medicine, he never returns our phone calls. He did return once, 8 hours after we called him. He is always late for his appointments.

I have been taking my daughter to see Dr. Kothare for over a year now, and am very grateful to him. My daughter is super complex, but he looks at her as a whole person, and thinks of many possible causes of her problems and comes up with a logical treatment plan every time. He has been available when I needed him. His expertise in sleep medicine in children with neurologic problems was why we saw him initiallyinitially, but he has been approaching my daughter' s difficult to control seizures very well. Highly recommended!

poor bed side manners, impatient, and very rude, not recommended

Dr. Kothare involve my 16 year old daughter in conversations about her epilepsy. He changes his mind every time we visit and he kicked her out of her own appointment once. At 16 she should be allowed to listen to what is happening. Every time we go he changes her medecin or dosages and last time he questioned if she really had epilepsy. Dr. Kothare is very unhelpful.