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SurgSpace / Specialties / Neurosurgery

Neurosurgery

Brain and spine: the physics of a rigid box, where pressure is the common enemy, haematomas measured against the clock, hydrocephalus drained by hydrostatics, and spinal cord compression where hours decide function for decades.

3 operations in depth5 interactive cases

Backdrop: Coronal contrast-enhanced MRI of the brain with a ring-enhancing glioblastoma and surrounding oedema · Christaras A · CC BY 2.5

Read the scan

Imaging

See the study, interpret it, then answer the surgical question.

The studies that shape surgical decision-making. Not a radiology curriculum: what the scan changes about the plan, then practice reading it.

Practice the image

Name the compartment

Knocked out briefly at football, talking normally in the ED, now drowsy two hours later. CT head. (Fictional educational case.)

Synthetic educational image · schematic head CT for compartment practice

Name the compartment, read the mass effect, and say why it is surgical: lens versus crescent is the first fork in every head-injury pathway.

What each study decides

Investigations

  • CT head

    • The specialty's front door: blood is bright, the shapes name the space (lens, crescent, sulcal), and shift and effacement measure the pressure the numbers cannot.
    • Speed is its virtue: minutes from question to answer, which is why decision rules push liberal scanning in head injury and anticoagulated falls.
    Want to interpret the full study? Open in RadSpace

  • CT & catheter angiography

    • After a subarachnoid haemorrhage, the aneurysm hunt: CTA finds most culprits, catheter angiography remains the arbiter and the coiling's road.
    • The vascular map also guards surgery: aneurysm neck, dome direction and branch vessels decide clip versus coil.
    Want to interpret the full study? Open in RadSpace

  • MRI of the spine

    • The only adequate test for cauda equina and cord compression: it sees the compressing disc, tumour, abscess or blood, and the cord's own signal.
    • Its urgency is clinical: documented saddle anaesthesia and retention move a scanner queue in a way vague back pain never will.
    Want to interpret the full study? Open in RadSpace

  • Neurological observations

    • GCS, pupils, limb power, charted at intervals matched to risk: the trend is the monitor, and a two-point GCS fall is an alarm, not an entry.
    • One examiner handing over to the next calibrates the chart: 'localising to pain' must mean the same thing at 2 a.m. as at handover.

Hub shaped by the Surgical Specialties Lead with the Neurosurgery reviewer (open seat). Images and videos carry their source; educational use for supervised learning, not clinical guidance.