what do neurosurgeons do?

[fireflyrxn]

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hi there

i never did a neurosurg rotation while in medschool and consequently, i've really got no first hand knowledge on what the day-to-day workings of the neurosurg service were. now that i'll be starting internship and need to do a month of it, i'm regretting not having done it!

what are the most common procedures performed? common complications?
any other tips?
cheers!

 

[bugmenot]

hi there

i never did a neurosurg rotation while in medschool and consequently, i've really got no first hand knowledge on what the day-to-day workings of the neurosurg service were. now that i'll be starting internship and need to do a month of it, i'm regretting not having done it!

what are the most common procedures performed? common complications?
any other tips?
cheers!

neurosurgery intern: get to hospital at 4am, round on 100 patients for notes, take ED consults, maybe go to weekly conference, write d/c orders,
check stat head ct for seniors, hopefully leave hospital by 7pm if not on call

neurosurgeon: usually has dedicated clinic day for seeing consults and postops, depending on size, scope of practice, location may do general neurosurgery (brain biospy, hematoma evacuation, spine surgery) to specialized cases (radiosurgery)

 

[Avery0106]

Would anyone know what the average length of time spent in surgery per case is?

 

[Vriesea]

Would anyone know what the average length of time spent in surgery per case is?

If I had to guess an average time for cases I would say around 4-5 hours, although this is highly variable and case-specific and surgeon-specific. Cases can be as short as 15-30 minutes (shunt revisions, basic peripheral nerve cases) to 10-12 hours or longer. The longer cases tend to be big skull base cases or big spinal fusions.
In private practice, the average length of cases is probably considerably shorter as they do mostly spine and the spine they do is usually smaller cases. Their cases probably average 2-3 hours.

 

[mysophobe]

When I did neurosurg the cranies tended to be 7 or 8 hours, the bigger fusions around 6-7. The more simple spine stuff was generally an hour or two. We didn't do much peripheral nerve stuff, but they don't take long. We did one shunt revision that took about 25 mins.