This Neurosurgery Awareness Month: Inside One of the Nation’s Top Pediatric Neurosurgery Programs
August is Neurosurgery Awareness Month, a time to recognize the surgeons, care teams and technology behind some of the most delicate procedures in medicine. At Rady Children’s Hospital San Diego, that recognition comes with a reminder: kids aren’t just small adults, and pediatric neurosurgery calls for its own tools, techniques and expertise.
At Rady Children’s, our pediatric neurosurgeons don’t just operate. They plan, visualize and rehearse every step of a procedure long before a child ever enters the operating room (OR). Led by Michael Levy, MD, PhD, chief of Pediatric Neurosurgery, the team performs more than 600 brain and spine procedures each year, built on more than 25 years of pioneering work in surgical robotics, advanced visualization and 3D modeling.
A Robot’s Pediatric Debut in the OR
This year, Rady Children’s Pediatric Neurosurgical skull base team welcomed a new tool into the OR: a neurosurgical robot making its pediatric debut. The robot attaches directly to the operating table and helps the surgical team map out a precise treatment trajectory before the first incision is made. It’s the latest chapter in a robotics program with a track record of firsts – Rady Children’s was the first hospital in the country to use the ROSA surgical robot to perform an endoscopic third ventriculostomy, a minimally invasive treatment for hydrocephalus.
Seeing Inside a Child’s Anatomy With Head-Mounted Displays
For more than 25 years, Rady Children’s neurosurgeons have also pioneered the use of head-mounted displays, which attach to the surgical microscope or endoscope to give the surgical team another way to visualize a child’s anatomy in real time, with a high-resolution field of view. It’s one of several homegrown innovations from the program, which has also developed a computerized system for neurosurgical visualization that helps surgeons integrate real and virtual imaging during a procedure.
Planning Surgery Before the First Incision With 3D Modeling
Before a complex skull base surgery ever begins, the team studies more than a scan. Using imaging from each child’s CT or MRI, Rady Children’s 3D Innovations (3DI) Lab builds a three-dimensional model of that child’s unique anatomy, helping neurosurgeons better understand critical neurovascular structures and review possible surgical approaches before ever entering the OR. Justin Ryan, PhD, who leads the 3DI Lab, and his team have used the same technology to help reshape care across plastic surgery, cardiology and orthopedics at Rady Children’s. Learn more about how 3D modeling helps pediatric care teams plan safer, more precise surgeries.
The Only Pediatric Skull Base Program on the West Coast
These technologies come together most visibly in Rady Children’s Complex Sinus and Skull Base Surgery Program, the only pediatric skull base center of its kind on the West Coast. There, neurosurgeons work side by side with otolaryngology, oncology and other specialists to treat some of the most complex conditions involving the brain and skull base in children, from brain and pituitary tumors to craniopharyngioma, often using minimally invasive endoscopic approaches designed to protect healthy tissue and shorten recovery.
In pediatric neurosurgery, innovation isn’t just about what’s next. It’s about finding better ways to care for kids today – this Neurosurgery Awareness Month, and every month.