Neurosurgery News and Research

RSS

Northwestern's Stone Institute launches new program to combat mental illnesses at first signs

Early symptoms of major mental illness can be subtle personality changes. Therefore, initial warning signs can often be missed, or even ignored due to conventional wisdom that suggests it's better to wait for true behavioral deterioration and prolonged patterns of abnormality before diagnosing and treating a mental illness. But experts warn that waiting until someone is so ill that the psychological sickness is unmistakable can be detrimental and can lead to long-term health concerns.

17 Apr 2012

MTR can prevent cell death in patients with TBI

Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center researchers seeking a successful treatment for traumatic brain injury have found that the size and extent of damaged tissue can be reduced by using a new device to prevent cell death.

17 Apr 2012

Hydrophilic carbon cluster HADES can selectively kill brain cancer cells

Nanomedicine researchers at the Methodist Neurological Institute and Rice University have developed a way to selectively kill brain cancer cells by using a tiny syringe to deliver a combination of chemotherapy drugs directly into the cells. These findings will be published in the April 24 issue of the American Chemical Society journal ACS Nano.

17 Apr 2012

AANS commemorates National Neurosurgery Awareness Week in Miami

The American Association of Neurological Surgeons (AANS) is commemorating National Neurosurgery Awareness Week (NNAW) April 15-21, 2012, in conjunction with its 80th Annual Scientific Meeting in Miami, held April 14-18, 2012.

17 Apr 2012

Men more likely to experience complications after brain or spinal surgery

Men are twice as likely as women to experience complications after brain or spinal surgery, reports a study in the April issue of Neurosurgery, official journal of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons.

16 Apr 2012

Neurosurgeons from NYU Langone to present at AANS annual meeting

Neurosurgeons from NYU Langone Medical Center will present research and discuss surgical approaches and use of new technologies to treat neurosurgical conditions at the annual meeting of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons (AANS), held April 14-18, 2012 in Miami Beach, FL.

16 Apr 2012

SMART Heart improves cardiovascular surgical outcomes

Two years ago, 57-year-old Allus Brown underwent a simultaneous heart-kidney transplant and spent months in and out of the hospital after battling dilated cardiomyopathy, a condition that enlarges and weakens the heart. Now fully recovered, Brown is still in and out of Northwestern Memorial Hospital's Bluhm Cardiovascular Institute each week. Only nowadays when he visits, he's laughing it up, playing board games, and sharing accounts of his own struggles with heart disease as part of the Bluhm Institute's new and innovative program, SMART Heart, stress management and recreational therapy for heart patients.

16 Apr 2012

People with PNES do not necessarily experience more frequent or severe stressful events

Based on their clinical experience and observations, a team of Johns Hopkins physicians and psychologists say that more than one-third of the patients admitted to The Johns Hopkins Hospital's inpatient epilepsy monitoring unit for treatment of intractable seizures have been discovered to have stress-triggered symptoms rather than a true seizure disorder.

12 Apr 2012

First Choice acquires FCMG

First Choice Healthcare Solutions, Inc. today announced its acquisition of First Choice Medical Group of Brevard, LLC, a multi-specialty medical group practice including orthopedics (both operative and non-operative), sports medicine, pain management and neurology located in Melbourne, Fla.

10 Apr 2012

NINDS awards NeuroSigma Phase I grant to develop TFN-covered stents

NeuroSigma, Inc., a Los Angeles-based medical device company, today announced it has been awarded a Phase I NIH-STTR grant from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) for the further development of its Thin-Film Nitinol (TFN)-covered stent for the potential treatment of brain aneurysms.

9 Apr 2012

Study explores link between intraoperative blood loss and pediatric patients' underlying condition

The relative risk of blood loss during corrective spine surgery in children appears linked to the underlying condition causing the spinal deformity, according to a new study from Johns Hopkins Children's Center.

7 Apr 2012

Obesity may be under diagnosed using BMI scale

We have relied on body mass index (BMI), a ratio of height to weight, to categorize people as overweight and obese for decades. A new study, however, suggests the use of BMI may be leading us to underestimate the obesity rate.

4 Apr 2012

Bare platinum coils vs. newer gel-coated coils for aneurysm treatment

Approximately 6 million Americans have brain aneurysms, a condition that occurs when a weak or thin spot develops on a blood vessel in the brain causing it to balloon. Often, these do not cause symptoms and go undetected, but every year an estimated 30,000 Americans experience a ruptured aneurysm that bleeds into the brain causing a life threatening injury.

4 Apr 2012

Stress-induced tolerance can prevent glaucoma

Working in mice, scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have devised a treatment that prevents the optic nerve injury that occurs in glaucoma, a neurodegenerative disease that is a leading cause of blindness.

4 Apr 2012

Johns Hopkins devises new seizure detection software

Epilepsy affects 50 million people worldwide, but in a third of these cases, medication cannot keep seizures from occurring. One solution is to shoot a short pulse of electricity to the brain to stamp out the seizure just as it begins to erupt. But brain implants designed to do this have run into a stubborn problem: too many false alarms, triggering unneeded treatment. To solve this, Johns Hopkins biomedical engineers have devised new seizure detection software that, in early testing, significantly cuts the number of unneeded pulses of current that an epilepsy patient would receive.

4 Apr 2012

NCAA-funded study to focus on sports-related concussions

Sports-related concussions have become a subject of deep concern in recent years, with Congress holding hearings on the issue, retired players suing sports leagues for alleged damage they've suffered, and new research pointing to degeneration in injured athletes' brains over time.

4 Apr 2012

Doctors more reluctant to start their patients on insulin

Doctors are more reluctant to start their patients on insulin than the patients are themselves, according to a new study led by researchers at St. Michael's Hospital.

3 Apr 2012

Successful aneurysm treatment may not improve quality of life

Patients with unruptured brain aneurysms have significant reductions in several areas of quality of life—especially physical functioning, reports a study in the April issue of Neurosurgery, official journal of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons. The journal is published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health.

2 Apr 2012

Elekta receives clearance to CE mark Agility device

Elekta announced today it has received clearance to CE mark Agility, a revolutionary beam-shaping device integrated into the head of a linear accelerator (linac). Patients and clinics will benefit from the speed and reliability of this new MLC design.

From Elekta 2 Apr 2012

Childhood onset temporal lobe epilepsy has a significant impact on brain aging

New research confirms that childhood onset temporal lobe epilepsy has a significant impact on brain aging. Study findings published in Epilepsia, a peer-reviewed journal of the International League Against Epilepsy (ILAE), show age-accelerated ventricular expansion outside the normal range in this patient population.

2 Apr 2012