Neurologist-Neurooncologist scope of practice?

[Tman507]

---

Members don't see this ad.

Was wondering what a Neurologist-Neurooncologist scope of practise is compared to those from oncology/radonc/neurosurge....i hear neurosurgery and radonc are able to perform gamma knife procedures, was wondering if a Neurologist-Neurooncologist will be able to practice gamma knife as well? as it has many other applications(trigeminal neuralgia, parkinsons) besides oncology and is non surgical
Or is the neurologist only involved in diagnosis, prognosis, monitoring and symptomatic relief?

 

[Telamir]

I don't think I've heard of a neuro oncologist doing gamma knife at all. Neuro-oncology is typically a 2 yr fellowship after neurology residency.

In my experience, neuro-oncologists are involved in diagnosis, prognosis, symptomatic relief/management of complications of neuro-oncologic disease (headache, seizures, etc) and in some institutions administer chemo (especially intrathecal chemo through Omaya reservoirs). They also deal with prognostication and treatment decisions in consultative basis when it comes to CNS mets from other primary tumors.

 

[deleted102545]

Neuro-oncologists do NOT do Gamma Knife or any kind of radiation. It is not in scope of training.

Regarding the above post, most, if not all, neuro-oncologists give chemotherapy. If you don't chemotherapy then hard to be considered an oncologist. I have the same chemo prescribing privileges as heme-oncs at our institution. It's just that most traditional chemo has poor CNS penetration so we don't have the same large arsenal as our colleagues.

 

[Thama]

This is the problem with many of these posts on this forum. People come here all the time and ask essentially "if I train as a neurologist can I then spend all my time doing this one lucrative procedure that fits infinitely better into the training of a different specialty?"

Neurologists are clinicians. Even when we find a procedural niche along surgeons, radiologists, etc, what we bring to the table is our clinical acumen (even when wearing the proceduralist hat). If your main goal is to pump out procedures then it is unlikely that a neurology residency will be a good fit. If you don't have the CV to be competitive in a procedural specialty and want to try to just use neurology to sneak in the back door, then you will be miserable and possibly dangerous as a resident with zero guarantees that your procedural trajectory will pan out.