What are some of the key issues facing neurosurgery in the year ahead?
The big issue is loss of the total scope of neurosurgical practice by erosion of our practice base from encroachment of other specialties. The two biggest threats right now are in spine and cerebrovascular. In spine, we have gained considerable ground from the benefit of David Kelly’s Spine Task Force and AANS practical courses to teach neurosurgeons how to do more complex spine procedures. A current threat is the loss of cardiovascular practice to interventional radiologists, cardiologists and neurologists unless we train more neurosurgeons to be involved in taking care of strokes and learning catheter and interventional techniques. We can do this by becoming partners with interventional radiologists and cardiologists and by training more interventional neurosurgeons. If you could accomplish just one thing during your Presidency, what would it be? Get every neurosurgeon involved in the care of cardiovascular problems at the basic level. This would be accomplished by beginning a “brain
