Neurosurgery Posts

I have posted the neurotrauma and the neurovascular updates for this month. Unfortunately, Acta Neurorchirurgica has not released the September issue yet. Currently, I post only about the published research work.

The neurooncolgy updates is still a work in progress. Till then I recommend reading this month and last month issue of "journal of neuro-oncolgy". There are some really good articles.

I have posted the neurotrauma and neuro-oncology updates for this months. I will be finishing the neurovascular updates very soon and post them later.

I wanted to write the subject of this post for long time. The death of science the way I grew up seeing it since I was a kid and the rise of the era of information processing. What made me sit and write this time is a brilliantly written article by Chris Anderson, editor- in- chief of Wired magazine and author of the popular blog “thelongtail.com”
Anderson noticed in this article that appeared in July 2008 issue of Wired that the approach to science in its old form which is “hypothesize, model, test” is becoming “obsolete”. We live in the age of “Petabytes”. We collect data. We find correlations and….Well, that’s it really. We are in a less need for models to experiment on. Data is paramount and “correlation is enough”. That reminds me of few facts. Generally I find reading a new study or article a bit painful. nearly all the studies in scientific and medical journals are full of complex statistical analysis that tries to find appropriate “correlations”. The only study I really enjoyed reading over the past 12 months is one published by Nature in their August 2 issue 2007 and was about using DBS for improving the functionality of a patient with a minimal consciousness state following a severe TBI. There was not much statistics. It was a great example of “hypothesize, model, experiment” form. A real joy to read.
A good example of what I am talking about is this study that was published last month in Neurosurgery (well, actually it is their May issue that is released in July!) about the correlation between subarachnoid haemorrhage and seasonal changes in Dusseldorf area in Germany. Authors found after analysing a sizable set of data that SAH incidence peaks in springtime. No satisfying physiological explanation was given and no clinical use of this information was suggested.
The situation sometimes gets confusing and the results could be variable. I have written about such confusion in a previous post about the use of statins to prevent vasospasm in SAH where some papers say it is a good idea while others say it is not, adding to the confusion.
This is the age of Google and search engines. I guess I shouldn't be complaining anymore!

References:

Beseoglu, K. (2008). DEPENDENCE OF SUBARACHNOID HEMORRHAGE ON CLIMATE CONDITIONS: A SYSTEMATIC METEOROLOGICAL ANALYSIS FROM THE DUSSELDORF METROPOLITAN AREA. Neurosurgery, 65(5), 1033-1039.

Schiff, N.D., Giacino, J.T., Kalmar, K., Victor, J.D., Baker, K., Gerber, M., Fritz, B., Eisenberg, B., O’Connor, J., Kobylarz, E.J., Farris, S., Machado, A., McCagg, C., Plum, F., Fins, J.J., Rezai, A.R. (2007). Behavioural improvements with thalamic stimulation after severe traumatic brain injury. Nature, 448(7153), 600-603. DOI: 10.1038/nature06041

I have to apologize for being late in the my updating. I was particularly busy during this time and I couldn't find time to collect any news until now.

In this month the updates are mainly in two fields: Neurovascular and Neurotrauma. I really did not find any interesting Neurooncology articles published during this month but if you disagree please let me know and I will look at it.

The design of the update post is a little different from the first one. I found this new design far easier and accessible than the one from before.

One last point is that I have included a May issue of Neurosurgery in this July update. The thing is that the May issue has been released in July. Don't ask me why!

Also, I may still add a follow up to the update as the latest J Trauma issue is yet to be released.

I am still working on expanding the updates to include Functional neurosurgery, Paediatric and spinal surgery.

I will be very grateful for any comment.

Starting from today I will be posting small summaries of articles and studies published recently and found them interesting. My project is still in its infancy and the final picture is not yet complete. I also plan to provide updates in paediatric neurosurgery, functional neurosurgery and spinal surgery. At the moment everything is the product of one person’s effort. I plan to include the suggestions and the perspectives of as many people from the speciality as possible.
My plan does not stop at this stage. It also includes establishing a bi-monthly email newsletter and a monthly podcast. The information along with the news is abundant but scattered all over the journals and websites. I aim to provide a single news source that gathers as much information as possible in one single portal. Anyone who is interested in more details can go back to the relevant journal which will be mentioned in the beginning of each review.
On the left hand side of this page you will find a list of the update topics. Just click on the one that interests you. I will be very grateful for any comments, suggestions or criticism