Two of New York's highest-paid surgeons have been suspended for abandoning a patient in the operating room after she was anesthetized and prepped for brain surgery.

Thomas Milhorat - chief of neurosurgery at North Shore University Hospital - and his colleague, Paolo Bolognese, were suspended for two weeks, officials confirmed.

The Long Island hospital took the rare step even though the surgeons are two of its biggest stars.

Milhorat earned $7.2 million in 2007 according to a Crain's New York survey - by far the biggest surgeon salary in the metro area - and Bolognese made $2.4 million.

They were suspended April 17 and scheduled to be reinstated this week.

The move came a week after the disturbing April 10 incident when Bolognese was scheduled to operate on a female patient, sources told the Daily News.

Frantic staff looked for him, but he was nowhere to be found.

The patient's head was shaved, anesthesia had been administered and she was laying out cold on the OR table near a table of sterilized instruments waiting to be used. Milhorat was then called, but he refused to do the surgery because the patient wasn't his.

No other surgeon apparently was available, and the surgery did not take place. It was not known what the patient and her family were told when she awoke.

Terry Lynam, a North Shore spokesman, said Milhorat and Bolognese are two of the hospital's "highest-volume surgeons." He declined to comment on the incident, citing confidentiality rules.

"We take a very proactive approach on quality-of-care matters, but I can't confirm or deny any of the particulars involving this case," he said.

Milhorat, 73, and Bolognese, 48, head up North Shore's Chiari Institute, which they opened with great fanfare in 2003. The facility draws patients from all over the world who are suffering from a rare congenital brain defect that can cause headaches, dizziness and other pain.

A state Health Department spokeswoman said the incident is under investigation.

A receptionist at the Chiari Institute in Great Neck, L.I., told The News the surgeons were in Italy attending a medical conference and could not be reached.

This is not the first trouble for North Shore's two big-name brain surgeons.

Last week, a Manhattan lawyer filed three malpractice suits against them in federal court, alleging they used patients with the Chiari defect - one as young as 4 - as guinea pigs for research and financial gain.

One $10 million suit accuses the doctors of telling the parents of a Louisiana 12-year-old that the surgery would be "a walk in the park." The suit claims the girl's condition has only worsened.

Leann Vercher, the mother of the 12-year-old - who had two daughters undergo the procedure in 2006 - said she was not surprised to hear about the no-show incident.

"All I can say is I heard this from many parents when we were there," Vercher said.