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Neurosurgeons are a group of doctors who save
lives. Neurosurgeons respond at a minutes
notice to emergencies in trauma whether it's
bleeding in the brain, a fracture of the spine,
or even a stroke. They're doctors who are
highly specialized to treat diseases of the
brain and spinal cord. A Neurosurgeon is a
doctor who trains for seven to ten years to
treat the most coveted organ of the body:
the brain and spinal cord. With today's technology,
Neurosurgeons can treat actually Parkinson's
disease epilepsy they can change the way blood
flows in and around your brain with stents.
It's an incredible thing to be a neurosurgeon.
Spine surgery has become incredibly safe.
We actually have the use of so much technology
we actually have the ability to monitor the
spinal cord and all its nerves. We have the
ability to use technologies that tell you
exactly where the bone is so you can avoid
putting our any injury or pressure on the
spinal cord during surgery. The actual risk
of causing weakness or paralysis from spinal
cord surgery today is less than 1%. This is
actually a very complicated question and it
requires evaluation by a neurosurgeon and
often with the team of doctors. See the spine
is a part of the body that actually ages and
ages and has a lot and is susceptible to a
lot of wear and tear. So, what this means
is as you get older your discs start wearing
out your ligaments get weaker your joints
get arthritic and the combination of all this
starts off by initially causing pain can easily
progress to numbness can easily cause weakness.
You never want to get to a point where you're
stuck because the disease has progressed to
such an amount. I think the most important
thing to learn is that if you're having symptoms
of pain, numbness, weakness, that requires
evaluation by a neurosurgeon. Jefferson is
an absolutely great place to practice pine
surgery Jefferson is one of the oldest spinal
cord injury centers in the country. In fact,
I believe that it was the second spinal cord
injury Center. I want to explain that for
a second. A long time ago, the National Institute
of Health actually appreciated that there
are so many patients who had injured their
spinal cords and it wasn't clear on what the
short term and long-term problems were. And
they set out to give a grant so all these
patients can be tracked. They called that
the Model Spinal Cord Injury Center. We are
one of the 14 current Model Spinal Cord Injury
Centers and we were the second one. That means
that to date, that we have made an effort
to track almost every patient who had a spinal
cord injury in the system to know what their
one-year, two-year, five-year, even 30-year
effectives from this type of problem. So that's
the type of history Jefferson has number one.
Number two, Jefferson actually has an incredible
collaboration among his doctors Jefferson
is a place that people come to have surgery.
When we look at the national averages of how
long it takes somebody when they have an acute
injury or trauma or a real bad accident to
have surgery, we can operate on that person
within 24 to 48 hours. There are some centers
in this country that the average length of
stay or time till surgery can easily be three
to five days. Surgery has always been a big
part of the delivery of health care at Jefferson
so we have accessed a tremendous amount of
resources there is almost no limitation on
what type of technology and tools that can
be brought into this institution that allows
us as surgeons to do what we need to. I'm
Ashwini Sharan, my mission at Jefferson is
to improve lives.
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