Community mourns Dr. Peter Sultan, Westhampton surgeon who died suddenly during Jamesport triathlon Sunday

A beloved local surgeon died Sunday morning after collapsing during the Jamesport Triathlon.

Dr. Peter Sultan, an orthopedic surgeon at Peconic Bay Medical Center in Riverhead for 20 years, was widely known in the community for his skill in his specialty of hip and knee replacement, his affable nature and his talent as an accomplished pianist.

Sultan’s sudden death at age 54 shocked friends and colleagues and left the hospital community reeling. He was an athlete who walked many miles daily, and an avid cyclist who also enjoyed running and snowboarding, friends said. Sultan competed frequently in the Jamesport Marathon, an annual event sponsored by Peconic Bay Medical Center.

“It’s so strange that this happened, because he certainly trained, but yet…” fellow surgeon and friend Dr. Agostino Cervone said in a phone interview today.

Andrew Mitchell, former president and CEO at Peconic Bay and a close friend of Sultan, said he was “just devastated” by the news. “He was my first real recruit at the hospital,” Mitchell said.

Sultan earned a bachelor’s degree in biology, magna cum laude with highest honor, from Harvard University and a doctor of medicine degree from Weill Medical College of Cornell University. He then studied business administration and management at the Wharton School before attending Harvard Medical School where he completed a fellowship in adult reconstructive surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital.

“Peter was one of Long Island’s top orthopedic surgeons,” Mitchell said. “He truly cared about his patients, the East End communities where he lived, and the continued advancement of PBMC into a highly regarded regional medical center.”

PBMC Executive Director Amy Loeb, who succeeded Mitchell in the top leadership post at the hospital after he retired in 2022, said Sultan, as the orthopedic surgery service’s first recruit, was key to the hospital’s transformation.

“Orthopedics really is the service that changed the hospital,” Loeb said. “He took a chance on us as a hospital and as a community and really built the hospital, and started to turn the reputation of the hospital around.”

“Patient by patient, he changed lives. Thanks to his joint replacement practice, thousands of people are able to move and walk and dance and enjoy their families,” Loeb said.

“He was so committed to his practice, to his patients, to the hospital — just an all around great guy,” she said.

Cervone said Sultan had a reputation for being very conservative with managing patients’ conditions, opting for nonsurgical treatment wherever possible. Other physicians — and their patients — appreciated that, Cervone said.

“He was very thorough. Patients liked him. He got great results and was very knowledgeable. He was always on top of everything,” Cervone said. “He enjoyed his work, he enjoyed his family, he enjoyed his life.”

Sultan, a Westhampton resident, was the devoted father of two teenage children, Elizabeth and William. “They were the world to him,” Cervone said.

Lisa Hubbard, administrative director of orthopedic services at Peconic Bay, worked closely with Sultan; they both started at the hospital in the fall of 2005. At first he was an introvert, she recalled. “He was very shy.” As he matured and got more comfortable in his new hospital, he became more outgoing, she said.

“Everyone loved Dr. Sultan,” she said. “Everyone is reeling from this loss.”

She said the hospital, which is usually bustling, has been extraordinarily quiet the past two days. The atmosphere there is “solemn.” she said. “I’ve never seen it like this before.”

Loeb said Sultan’s loss “leaves a big hole we all need to just reconcile.” Right now, everyone is stunned and still trying to process what’s happened. “It’s so fresh,” she said.

Loeb said she visited the unit where he worked, the OR and his practice team who worked with him every day.

“They are so focused on making sure their patients are taken care of,” said Loeb. “We offered to have other staff make those calls, but they wanted to make the calls themselves, because ‘They’re our patients,’ they said. It speaks to the culture of Dr. Sultan’s office and who he was.”

Those phone calls have been emotional, Hubbard said, often ending with both patients and staff members crying.

“He loved his patients and they loved him,” she said.

As masterful as Sultan was with his hands in the operating room, he was even more so on the piano keyboard, said his friend and coworker Jerome Foster Lewis, a vocalist who would often team up with Sultan for impromptu concerts in the hospital lobby, which is outfitted with a grand piano donated by a benefactor. Sultan was not only a self-taught pianist but he also played by ear — he didn’t read music, Lewis said. He learned new pieces quickly and had an extensive repertoire committed to memory.

“He was a genius — a brilliant, brilliant human being,” Lewis said.

Sultan would go down to the lobby, dressed in scrubs, and play a little concert in between surgeries, he said. The performances surprised and delighted patients and visitors and soothed the nerves of family members waiting to see their loved ones after procedures.

“The unexpected concerts gave them the uplift they needed,” said Lewis, a patient experience specialist at PBMC. People really appreciated it, he said. “It was a joy for us, too. It was uplifting and gave us the strength we needed,” he said. “He would always say, ‘Medicine cures the body, but music cures the soul.’”

“He told me to never give up on my music — ‘That’s what you are meant to do,’ he told me. ‘It’s the core of who you are.’ It was the core of who he was, too,” Lewis said.

“People saw the analytical side of him. I got to see the artist. It was a side of him I’m so grateful I got to experience,” Lewis said. “The relationship will always be sacred to me.”

Sultan was always enthusiastic about sharing his music with others. He kept a keyboard in his office and practiced every chance he got.

“It’s so sad, somebody so vital and in a really good place in his life and looking forward to so many things with his kids, with his career…” Hubbard said. ”He was living and loving life.”

Loeb said the deep grief everyone feels and the way people are supporting each other says a lot about the hospital and the people who work there.

“That doesn’t happen everywhere. Not every place is like a family. To look around and see the love that we have here, it’s really special.”