Department of Neurological Surgery

Clinics

Residents are required to attend clinics on a weekly basis while on service. Patients seen in clinic fall into one of the following broad categories: specialty-specific pre-operative consultations or operative evaluations, post-operative follow-ups, or follow-ups from on-call inpatient consultations (e.g., trauma patients).

Adult Neurosurgery Clinics

Residents are expected to provide coverage for adult neurosurgery clinics on Mondays and Thursday mornings.  Monday clinics are all day and consist of Dr. Kurt Eichholz’s spine clinic.  Dr. Richard Bucholz holds clinic in the West Pavilion Cancer Center as does Dr. Saleem Abdulrauf and his fellows on Thursday mornings. Each attending has a clinical nurse who is responsible for scheduling outpatient tests, follow-up appointments, and other pre-operative or post-operative studies. The role of the resident is to perform a thorough history and physical examination on new patients, a focused history and exam on follow-up patients, review any and all imaging studies with the attending physician, and generate a management plan.

Pediatric Neurosurgery Clinics

The pediatric neurosurgery clinic is held at Cardinal Glennon Children's Medical Center on the ground floor in the outpatient area. The pediatric neurosurgical resident, the nurse practitioner, and a staff neurosurgeon attend the general pediatric neurosurgery clinic each Tuesday afternoon. The program is very fortunate to have an excellent nurse practitioner who sees patients, performs histories and physical examinations, and performs clinical outpatient procedures (e.g., programming and refilling Baclofen pumps). The resident also performs these evaluations and reviews all imaging studies with the staff neurosurgeon. Neurosurgery clinic patients generally fall into one of the following broad categories: pre-operative consultations or operative evaluations, post-operative follow-ups, or follow-ups from on-call inpatient consultations (e.g., trauma patients). Other separate pediatric multidisciplinary clinics that involve neurosurgery include myelomeningocele and brain tumor clinics.

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