Neurosurgery or neurological surgery, known in common parlance as brain surgery, is the medical specialty concerned with the prevention, diagnosis, surgical treatment, and rehabilitation of disorders which affect any portion of the nervous system including the brain, spinal cord, central and peripheral nervous system, and cerebrovascular system.

NAME OF HEAD OR AG HEAD: Dr. Teddy Totimeh

Neurosurgery or neurological surgery, known in common parlance as brain surgery, is the medical specialty concerned with the prevention, diagnosis, surgical treatment, and rehabilitation of disorders which affect any portion of the nervous system including the brain, spinal cord, central and peripheral nervous system, and cerebrovascular system.

Main divisions

General neurosurgery involves most neurosurgical conditions including neuro-trauma and other neuro-emergencies such as intracranial haemorrhage. Most level 1 hospitals have this kind of practice.

Specialized branches have developed to cater to special and difficult conditions. These specialized branches co-exist with general neurosurgery in more sophisticated hospitals. To practice advanced specialization within neurosurgery, additional higher fellowship training of one to two years is expected from the neurosurgeon. Some of these divisions of neurosurgery are:

⦁          Vascular neurosurgery includes clipping of aneurysms and performing carotid endarterectomy (CEA).

⦁          Stereotactic neurosurgery, functional neurosurgery, and epilepsy surgery (the latter includes partial or total corpus callosotomy – severing part or all of the corpus callosum to stop or lessen seizure spread and activity, and the surgical removal of functional, physiological and/or anatomical pieces or divisions of the brain, called epileptic foci, that are operable and that are causing seizures, and also the more radical and very, very rare partial or total lobectomy, or even hemispherectomy – the removal of part or all of one of the lobes, or one of the cerebral hemispheres of the brain; those two procedures, when possible, are also very, very rarely used in oncological neurosurgery or to treat very severe neurological trauma, such as stab or gunshot wounds to the brain)

⦁          Oncological neurosurgery also called neurosurgical oncology; includes pediatric oncological neurosurgery; treatment of benign and malignant central and peripheral nervous system cancers and pre-cancerous lesions in adults and children (including, among others, glioblastoma multiforme and other gliomas, brain stem cancer, astrocytoma, pontine glioma, medulloblastoma, spinal cancer, tumours of the meninges and intracranial spaces, secondary metastases to the brain, spine, and nerves, and peripheral nervous system tumours)

⦁          Skull base surgery

⦁          Spinal neurosurgery

⦁          Peripheral nerve surgery

⦁          Pediatric neurosurgery (for cancer, seizures, bleeding, stroke, cognitive disorders or congenital neurological disorders)

Neuropathology

Neuropathology is a specialty within the study of pathology focused on the disease of the brain, spinal cord, and neural tissue.[22] This includes the central nervous system and the peripheral nervous system. Tissue analysis comes from either surgical biopsies or post mortem autopsies. Common tissue samples include muscle fibres and nervous tissue.[23] Common applications of neuropathology include studying samples of tissue in patients who have Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, dementia, Huntington's disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, mitochondria disease, and any disorder that has neural deterioration in the brain or spinal cord.

Neuroanesthesia.

Neuroanesthesia is a field of anesthesiology which focuses on neurosurgery. Anaesthesia is not used during the middle of "awake" brain surgery. Awake brain surgery is where the patient is conscious for the middle of the procedure and sedated for the beginning and end. This procedure is used when the tumour does not have clear boundaries and the surgeon wants to know if they are invading on critical regions of the brain which involve functions like talking, cognition, vision, and hearing. It will also be conducted for procedures which the surgeon is trying to combat epileptic seizures.

Conditions

Conditions treated by neurosurgeons include, but are not limited to:

⦁          Meningitis and other central nervous system infections including abscesses

⦁          Spinal disc herniation

⦁          Cervical spinal stenosis and Lumbar spinal stenosis

⦁          Hydrocephalus

⦁          Head trauma (brain haemorrhages, skull fractures, etc.)

⦁          Spinal cord trauma

⦁          Traumatic injuries of peripheral nerves

⦁          Tumours of the spine, spinal cord and peripheral nerves

⦁          Intracerebral haemorrhages, such as subarachnoid haemorrhages, interdepartmental, and intracellular haemorrhages

⦁          Some forms of drug-resistant epilepsy

⦁          Some forms of movement disorders (advanced Parkinson's disease, chorea) – involve the use of specially developed minimally invasive stereotactic techniques (functional, stereotactic neurosurgery) such as ablative surgery and deep brain stimulation surgery

⦁          Intractable pain of cancer or trauma patients and cranial/peripheral nerve pain

⦁          Some forms of intractable psychiatric disorders

⦁          Vascular malformations (i.e., arteriovenous malformations, venous angiomas, cavernous angiomas, capillary telangiectasia) of the brain and spinal cord

⦁          Moya disease

 

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