Dr. Robert Solomon (left) with Dr. Michael Sisti

From right to left, Dr. Michael Kaiser, Dr. Christopher Winfree, & Dr. Robert Solomon

More than 90 members of our staff attended our Holiday party this year at  Dylan Prime restaurant in New York City.

Everyone enjoyed the opportunity to relax in good company and to celebrate all the years’ achievements.

Our webmaster Greta Perovic did a wonderful job organizing the event. Everyone had a ball.

Here’s to another year!

Dr. Anthony D'Ambrosio (seated in white)

Alice Hsu (Center, gray top) with attendees at a recent Patient Family Coffee Break

Dr. Michael Sisti just signed on to sponsor  a new outreach program called Patient & Family Coffee Break.

The program is held once a month for our neurosurgical patients and their families to get together with hospital staff in a comfortable and informal setting.

“This space is created to welcome any questions, concerns & suggestions that affect our patients’ stay here at 8 Hudson North*,” says Alice Hsu, an enthusiastic night shift nurse who started the program last April.

“I have always been passionate about finding new ways to facilitate communication and dialogue between our staff and our patients,” says Hsu. “Patient satisfaction is very important to me and I wanted to gather feedback on the care our unit was providing.”

Their first meeting, last April, was attended by about 25 people (patients and family members) and a slew of staff nurses including the unit’s Clinical Nurse Leader.

Hsu says,” People gave lots of positive feedback regarding our unit. We had the opportunity to provide support for our patients and to build a deeper relationship with them. Patients and their families were able to share and offer encouragement to each other. And of course, there was coffee, tea, and refreshments.”

Dr. Michael Sisti

Since April, Hsu says, “It has been inconsistent because we did not have enough funding.  Now, Dr. Sisti has kindly volunteered to help support this outreach. We anticipate reaching out to more people consistently each month and we hope that the attendance will grow.

Dr. Sisti says when he first learned of this program, “I immediately recognized how important this service would be. It is what we are all trying to do on 8 Hudson North everyday, to bring the highest level of care and comfort possible to the most scared and sickest of all patients and their families.”

The next Coffee Break will be held this Thursday, November 3rd at 5pm in the 8 Hudson North* patient lounge.

* 8 Hudson North is the neurosurgical unit on the 8th floor of the Milstein Hospital building.

Our Department Head, Dr. Robert A. Solomon will be bringing his expertise to the table as moderator of a Luncheon Seminar on Multidisciplinary Management Strategies for Unruptured Aneurysms.

Other members of our Department will be acting as Conference Faculty, Moderators, and Course Directors as well. They are listed below:

Dr. Jeffrey N. Bruce from the Brain Tumor Center
Dr.E. Sander Connolly Jr from the Cerebrovascular Center
Dr. Neil A. Feldstein from the Pediatric Neurosurgery Center
Dr. Richard C.E. Anderson from the Pediatric Neurosurgery Center
Dr. Paul C. McCormick from the Spine Center
Dr. Peter D. Angevine from the Spine Center
Dr. Alfred T. Ogden from the Spine Center
Dr, Michael G. Kaiser from the Spine Center
Dr. Guy M. McKhann from the Epilepsy Center  & Movement Disorders Center
Dr.Christopher J. Winfree from the Pain Center & Peripheral Nerve Center

Learn more about the 2011 Meeting of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons. 

Read about last year’s conference Docs Present At 2010 Congress Of Neurological Surgeons Meeting.

Here at the Department of Neurosurgery we know how important it is to pick the right doctor for you. You want someone more than qualified to do the work but you also want someone who will listen, help allay your fears, and overall have a comfortable bed-side manner.

With that in mind, we have begun putting together mini documentaries on each of our doctors. In these short (3 minutes or so) videos you can see and hear them talk about what they do. We think it’s a great way to meet them before you actually meet them.

We are pleased that our first video is of Dr. Michael Sisti from the Brain Tumor Center and Gamma Knife Center. Please have a look at the first in our new video series.

This type of tumor is fast growing and now accounts for the majority of brain-tumor-related deaths in children. DIPG is particularly difficult to treat because of its location deep among the most vital structures of the brain. Further, the dosage of chemotherapy necessary to kill these cancer cells is too toxic for the body.

The best doctors have been able to offer these patients is a lower dose of chemotherapy along with radiation. Both of which, for the most part, just ease their symptoms.  Newer, more effective therapeutic modalities are desperately needed for children with DIPG.

For the first time, at the Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center, Drs. Anderson and Bruce used convection enhanced delivery (CED) to deliver the chemotherapy agent topotecan directly into the tumors of two pediatric patients.

CED uses stereotactic brain imaging to correctly place ultra thin catheters deep into the brain with minimal disturbance to the surrounding tissue. In this way, doctors are able to deliver a higher dose of the drug exactly where its needed and avoid the system wide toxicity of conventionally delivered chemotherapy.

The children are the first two pediatric patients with DIPG enrolled in a phase I clinical trial.  Anderson and Bruce are optimistic that their work will establish CED as a safe and effective new treatment for children with these deadly tumors.

Every year Dr. Neil A. Feldstein from the Pediatric Neurosurgery Center puts together a parting gift for the graduating residents.  Using digital tools like Photo Shop he creates a personalized poster presented to the residents at their year-end celebratory dinner.

Feldstein has done this for the last sixteen years and says he enjoys it more every year. Most recently he has been using a movie-poster theme.

Dr. Neil Feldstein

In this year’s poster (seen above) you can find departing Chief residents  Omar N Syed, MD, Robert Morgan Stuart,MD, and Andrew F Ducruet, MD.

According to Dr. Feldstein, “The theme is taken from one of the movie posters from Inception with the thought that the implantation of the idea that they had become neurosurgeons was not theirs but rather implanted.”

You can learn more about Dr. Feldstein’s annual picture in our previous blog, Dr. Feldstein’s Annual Picture Is Our ‘Macy’s Day Parade’

You can learn more about this year’s graduating residents here in our blog, Say Goodbye To The Chiefs.

Celebrating their Graduation (from left to right) are; Dr. Andrew F Ducruet, Dr. Robert Morgan Stuart, and Dr. Omar N Syed, MD

Seems like only yesterday we announced our three new Chief residents and now they are gone.

Chiefs Omar N Syed, MD, Robert Morgan Stuart,MD, and Andrew F Ducruet, MD have made it. They graduated and are heading out into the neurosurgery world to make their mark.

Dr. Syed will be doing a Fellowship in Minimally Invasive Spinal Neurosurgery at Semmes-Murphey Neurologic and Spine Institute in Memphis, Tennessee.

Dr. Stuart will be joining Charleston Neurosurgical Associates at Roper St. Francis Healthcare in Charleston, South Carolina.

Dr. Ducruet will be doing a Fellowship in Endovascular Neurosurgery at the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix, Arizona.

Former Senior residents Raqeeb Haque, MD and Paul Gigante, MD have moved up to be our new Chiefs.

We are also pleased to welcome two new residents into our program. Dr. Gaurav Gupta has joined us from Stanford University School of Medicine in Stanford, California and Dr. Jonathan Yun came to us from University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey/R.W. Johnson Med. School in Piscataway, New Jersey.

Congratulations and welcome everyone!

Dr. Jeffrey Bruce

Columbia’s College of Physician’s and Surgeon’s Newsroom has an article about Dr. Jeffrey Bruce‘s latest research on the treatment of brain tumors.

The article, Breaking a Barrier in Brain Cancer, has been receiving wide attention and has become one of the main stories they are circulating.

In the article, Dr. Bruce talks about his a recent clinical trial involving “convection enhanced delivery” of chemotherapy drugs in the treatment of brain tumors.

Traditionally difficult to treat, Dr. Bruce says, “It’s not that the drugs don’t work. It’s that you can’t get enough of the drug into the tumor where you need it.”

In his trial, Dr. Bruce’s was able to treat malignant gliomas in particular with the drug Topotecan using a new method of delivery.  His results have been very promising and it is no wonder the news is spreading.

You can learn more about Dr. Bruce’s research: in the article, Breaking a Barrier in Brain Cancer; in the following blogs, Bruce Presents Exciting New Brain Tumor Research At AANS and Dr. Bruce Invited To Speak At Cornell; as well as at the Bartoli Brain Tumor Laboratory‘s page.

'The New Walkway' by Kate McGloughlin

Along a brightly lit hallway on the 4th floor of the Neurological Institute hangs a series of four oil paintings. Their muted colors and industrial lines capture the hospital’s surrounding neighborhood of Fort Washington.

They were painted by Kate McGloughlin from a handful of sketches she made while waiting for her twin brother, Michael, to recover from brain surgery.

“Michael was a strapping young Irishman,” says Kate.  ”He was just swinging along in his life, doing everything right, when he started getting these headaches.”

This was in 1989 and Michael was just 27 years old. Kate remembers, “He had been having a hell of a time all spring long. We finally got him down to the local emergency room.”

Four days later, at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, Michael went in for his first craniotomy.

Michael’s surgeon, Dr. Michael Sisti from the Brain Tumor Center and  the Gamma Knife Center says, “Michael had a tumor in the front of his brain. The surgery was very successful; the tumor just popped right out. There was no invasion into the brain.”

Kate says, “Michael, through the entire time, had the most optimistic outlook. It was so infectious. We just never thought the guy would die.  He’d be fine for 20-24 months and then he’d start with getting a seizure, or his one eye would look funny. It was a bear of a tumor. It just kept growing back.”

During one of Michael’s last operations, Kate says, “I took my sketch book and did eight or ten little sketches.” Kate is a print maker and a painter and from those six sketches came about 35 pieces.

“The gallery I was working for in Woodstock loved them,” says Kate. “We had this big show called ‘Waiting for Michael,’ because that is what I was doing when I was doing those sketches.”  The critics loved them.   Michael himself was at the opening.  Kate says, “He was the big celeb. He loved that something good could come from something so difficult.”

But, after nine years of repeated surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation, “Michael had really had it,” Says Kate. “He was done.”  Michael died a few months after the exhibit.

Things got dark for Kate for a while, and so did her art work. She says, “I really had to make room on the bus for grief. The irony is that after that, my career took off.

About a year later I got a call, kind of randomly, from a guy named John Collins at the Department of Neurosurgery inquiring about the artwork. I said the only ones I have left are the large oils and he said ‘we’ll take them.’

It was a stroke of great fortune for me because, my studio was down in this tractor garage and got completely flooded that year, and I lost a lot of work.”

Kate opened a new account with the money she got from the Department of Neurosurgery, and determined to put any art proceedes towards building a new studio.  “And, don’t you know, once I opened that account and started putting money in it, I started selling work hand over fist. It was unbelievable.”

By the summer of 2000 Kate had drawn up the plans, had the building permits, and was building her studio.

It sits on her family’s old Dairy farm in Olivebridge, New York. Fashioned after a chicken coop, the 14×24 foot building has high ceilings, lots of light, and a tin roof for the sound of the rain.

“The other beautiful part,” says Kate, “is that, Michael’s friends helped me build it.  Actually build it–with hammer and nails.  I have this beautiful wall of Northern light because of one friend who got us all these recycled windows.

Every time I walk in there it is like another gift.  It is very inspiring.  There is something—I don’t want to get too corny—it’s like walking into a church in a way.  The studio that Michael built.”

We are privileged to have Kate’s paintings, and all they represent, hanging in our hallway. “I walk by Kate’s paintings everyday on the way to my office before going to surgery,” says Dr.Sisti. ”The beauty of the paintings and their connection to Michael, Kate, his family, and our hospital has been a source of daily inspiration to me since the first day they were hung up.  They demonstrate art’s power to speak to our struggles, memories, and hopes.”

Thank you Kate.

You can learn more about Kate and see more of her artwork at www.katemcgloughlin.com.

In Michael’s honor, donations are welcome at the Olivebridge United Methodist Church Food Pantry, PO Box 1397, Olivebridge, NY 12461.

“I was involved in several symposia which allowed us to present some of the latest work we are doing at Columbia to advance the field,” Says Dr. Bruce.

He was active in five different sessions as: Speaker at a symposium about Maximizing Extent of Resection in Primary Brain Tumors; Moderator at a Scientific Session on Tumors; Moderator at the Joint Section Session on Tumors; Discussant on a Panel about the Prevalence and Natural History of Pineal Cysts in Adults; And Panelist for a discussion on the Spectrum of Adjuvant Therapy for Brain Tumors.

“The conference provided a good update on all of the newest developments in neurosurgery.” Says Dr. Bruce, “ I am completing my term as Chairman of the Tumor Section where we have been productive. The brain tumor field has been very active in trying to develop new treatments for patients.”

He spoke about his lab‘s recently completed convection enhanced delivery trial of topotecan. The trial, led by Dr. Bruce at the Bartoli Brain Tumor Laboratory is described as follows:

-a multidisciplinary NIH-funded Phase I trial for brain tumor patients using a novel strategy that delivers chemotherapy directly into the tumor. A chemotherapy drug, Topotecan, is slowly pumped into the tumor and surrounding brain tissue through catheters that have been stereotactically implanted. This strategy, known as convection enhanced delivery, significantly increases the amount of drug that enters the tumor and avoids systemic side effects since the drug remains only in the brain. Bartoli Brain Tumor Laboratory

The results of the trial showed, “Significant anti-tumor activity as described by radiographic changes and prolonged overall survival with minimal drug associated toxicity,” Says Dr. Bruce. They also extablished a maxiumum tolerated dose for future phase II studies.

Congratulations to Dr. Bruce and everyone at the Bartoli Brain Tumor Lab on the completion of this important trial!