Preceptor: Badih Adada, MD
Duration: 4 weeks
Availability: Year-round
No. of Students: 2
Location: 2950 Cleveland Clinic Blvd., Weston, FL 33331

Prerequisite

Completion of all core clerkships. Open to senior medical students.

Objectives

To provide students with an introduction to Neurosurgery, including, but not limited to:

General

  • Glasgow Coma Scale
  • The neurological exam
  • Detailed examination of a comatose patient
  • Ventriculostomy and ICP monitors
  • CSF dynamics and content
  • Basic interpretation of brain and spine CT scans and MRIs
  • Traumatic brain injury and elevated ICP
  • Management of subdural and epidural hematomas

Spine

  • Dermatomes and myotomes
  • Myelopathy Radiculopathy
  • Spinal cord syndromes
  • Cauda equina syndrome
  • Low back pain work-up and management
  • Spinal stenosis
  • Discogenic pain
  • Spinal decompression
  • Spinal fusion
  • Traumatic injuries to the spine
  • Spinal deformity
  • Spinal cord injury (including ASIA scale)

Tumors

  • Epidemiology & presentation
  • Cerebral Edema
  • Primary brain tumor management (e.g., glioma)
  • Brain metastases management
  • Radiosurgery
  • Skull base surgery
  • Endoscopic surgery
  • Pituitary and sellar/parasellar tumors; endocrinologic considerations
  • Spine tumors

Epilepsy

  • Types of seizures
  • Seizure monitoring
  • Etiology
  • Anti-epileptic drug management
  • Surgery for epilepsy

Functional

  • Trigeminal neuralgia and pain disorders management
  • Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) for movement disorders

Vascular

  • Aneurysmal Subarachnoid Hemorrhage (SAH) management
  • Seizures, hydrocephalus, vasospasm
  • Aneurysm treatment options: Clipping vs coiling
  • Vascular Malformations
  • Intracerebral Hemorrhage
  • Stroke, ischemic and hemorrhagic

Description

During your entire rotation, you will be embedded in the inpatient neurosurgery service at the main Florida campus of the Cleveland Clinic in Weston, Florida. Cleveland Clinic Florida serves both domestic and international patients with a wide range of neurosurgical pathology, often with a history of multiple previous surgical treatments. You will be expected to help gather information, assess patients, and assist in the clinical decision-making process. We have a very busy surgical service, and rotators should expect to spend nearly every day scrubbed into cases. Outside the OR, you will also have the opportunity to gain exposure to our staff in their subspecialty clinics one day a week. We have daily neuroscience lectures at noon, weekly neurosurgery conferences, and rotators are expected to attend. During one of our weekly neurosurgery conferences, you will be expected to give a 10 – 15-minute talk.

Our hope is that your rotation will help you to prepare to be a successful neurosurgery intern and help you to get to know us better, as well as to allow you to experience the quality of training and patient care at the Cleveland Clinic first-hand.

Evaluation

Evaluations will be distributed by the UME department to the preceptor at the end of the rotation.