Dr. Yitao Ma, MD

Called me on the phone on a Friday and told me I had a large mass on my brain and that I needed to see a surgeon as soon as possible. I just thought she was very cold hearted by telling me over the phone instead of calling me into her office. I had the worst and longest weekend ever. I though I was dying. She needs to learn compassion.

Dr ma is a very nice and smart doctor she is helping me with my back pain and leg pain and numbness she takes her time and listens to all I have to say. She has been a great help

Dr. Ma only wants another visit, and another visit. She was recommended after I visited the emergency room for slight numbness in one leg from ankle to knee. During the office visit, she only recommended a cat scan, and neurological scan weeks away. I feel like I'll only be paying for office visits. Her bedside manners is horrible and only tells you that you're stroke and heart attack prone. She told me the same thing that they told me in ER. Came away with no diagnosis from her. Oh well, another co-pay thrown out the window...I do not recommend her.

Doesn't seem to be a way to amend the review, but the information from my wife from the pharmacists needs correcting. The exact medication she is currently on does not interact with the proposed medication. What the pharmacist spoke about were side effects common to the drug (we were not informed by the good doctor about this at any rate), hence the "good choice" when she declined to take it. Makes me feel slightly less upset with the doctor and I should retract my "dangerous" assessment of her prescriptions. Otherwise, my review stands.

The experience is bad enough that it is worth writing a review. But after speaking with a pharmacists and basically confirming earlier opinions, I'm angry enough to write. We had the more senior doctor, who is an MS-specialist, recommended to us, but since they didn't have any openings for months, because the current flare-up would likely be finished, we chose to see another neurologist in the practice, assuming there may be some sharing of information and experience. She's young, which may mean she's less wed to older information? When you have MS, neurologists are not fun experiences. Out of 6, all but 1 found nothing wrong neurologically and referred us to rheumatologists (who usually refer back to neurologists for the same reasons). I get it, this is hard to diagnose, and we've been dancing around MS for a long time and it still could be something else. Where Dr. Ma separates herself from the other unhelpful experiences is in her manner and apparent competence. First, she speaks a mile a minute. Extremely fast. Like an insecurity that masks itself by never letting anyone speak if she's speaking. She asked a battery of questions, a good thing, noting down the answers. But then, we're trying to give her data points, describing what's happening, and she very quickly jumps to conclusions. For instance, we've had swelling, obvious inflammation, but its all dismissed as complex migraines, these years of strange symptoms. Maybe... We're still willing to listen. Second, we describe symptoms, the operating theories other doctors have, and she immediately critiques the symptoms (in and of itself a good thing), and then decides it must be something completely different. We have numbness on one side of forehead and same side of body. Can't be this because they should be on opposite sides if the cause is in one part of the brain. But, so its a migraine, because these symptoms don't make sense to her. It's not like we invented these symptoms to test her. They don't make sense to us. But they're there, and they're quite real. If you don't think its MS, fine. But then you explain how its all one-sided. Or at least say I don't know, and maybe suggest tests to find out. Third, on healthgrades MS is listed as something she treats. She's certain that if we don't see anything on the MRI, then its not MS. Despite that for most people you go through years of nothing until something shows up in the later stages. We don't get the impression that she has any experience with this condition. Just her information on MRIs alone (contrast/no contrast) seemed sketchy compared to what other neurologists told us (consistently). Fourthly, and most seriously, we're on one medication, that among other things has anti-seizure effects for this condition to dull pain. She prescribes another to treat these migraines, that has similar effects. We ask very specifically about interractions -- do we use these together -- and she assures us there are none because one treats the neurological effects in the body, one is targeted to migraines. Ok, she's a doctor. Trust but verify. We can ask the pharmacist, or look it up online. We go to the pharmacist, ask him the same questions, and he reads off a litany of interactions, some serious. This guy we trust, based on a lot of prior interactions. He is very concerned, and when my wife decides not to take it, he says good choice. He recommends Johns Hopkins. We have no good impression of our single meeting with this Dr. Ma. Our impression is one of incompetence. We've been to other neurologists who weren't helpful, but this was on a whole new level. Maybe you have a better experience -- ours could have been uniquely bad -- but her advice sounded wrong, her bedside manner, patient interest and speech were very off-putting and her prescriptions downright dangerous.

She is kind, patient and intelligent. Extremely knowledgeable. True M.D and Ph.D.