biology

Neuroplastic surgery

Neuroplastic surgery is a biology topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Neuroplastic surgery rather than just read about it. In short: Neuroplastic or neuroplastic and reconstructive surgery is the surgical specialty involved in reconstruction or restoration of patients who undergo surgery of the central or peripheral nervous system. The field includes a wide variety of surgical procedures that seek to restore or replace a patient's skull, face, scalp, dura (the protective covering of the brain and spinal cord), the spine and/or its overlying tissu…

Key takeaways

Neuroplastic surgery belongs to biology; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Neuroplastic surgery to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Neuroplastic surgery from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Neuroplastic or neuroplastic and reconstructive surgery is the surgical specialty involved in reconstruction or restoration of patients who undergo surgery of the central or peripheral nervous system. The field includes a wide variety of surgical procedures that seek to restore or replace a patient's skull, face, scalp, dura (the protective covering of the brain and spinal cord), the spine and/or its overlying tissues.

History of the field Neuroplastic surgery has adapted reconstructive principles from the fields of craniofacial surgery, and plastic and reconstructive surgery and refined them in order to prevent and/or address challenging deformities which result from Neurosurgical Procedures. The evolution of this new specialty and first center for Neuroplastic and Reconstructive Surgery was started at Johns Hopkins University Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland by a formal collaboration between the Department of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery and Department of Neurosurgery, under the vision of Dr. Chad Gordon. Upon arrival to Johns Hopkins Hospital, Gordon formed a multi-disciplinary team of physicians, scientists and engineers. The team's unified goal was to develop techniques and devices to treat adult neurosurgical patients. These advances led to several "first-in-human" publications and skull implant/craniofacial computer-assisted technology patents, and allowed for the establishment of the first formal fellowship training program in Neuroplastic and Reconstructive Surgery. In March 2018, Dr. Gordon was appointed the Director of Neuroplastic and Reconstructive Surgery at Johns Hopkins. In 2018, the "Society of Neuroplastic Surgery" was officially formed with the mission to "advance the art, science, and technology related to Neuroplastic and Reconstructive Surgery", and at that time, Dr. Gordon was elected to be the society's first President. The first peer-reviewed journal to recognize neuroplastic and reconstructive surgery as its own field was the Journal of Craniofacial Surgery which dedicated its January 2018 issue to introducing the new field of neuroplastic surgery to its readership. In that issue, the editor-in-chief, Mutaz Habal, published an editorial on neuroplastic surgery where he stated: "Based on the desire to present the fact that neuroplastic surgery is there, we have a dedicated this issue of the Journal of Craniofacial Surgery. This presentation mostly involves surgical procedures that will be termed ‘‘neuroplastic’’ in the years to come."

Training Training in neuroplastic surgery requires completion of a neuroplastic and reconstructive surgery fellowship which lasts 1–2 years. Such fellowships are available to individuals who have completed a residency in Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, ENT Surgery, Neurosurgery or Oral and Maxillofacial surgery. As of today, the only formal fellowship training program in neuroplastic and reconstructive surgery is located at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and Johns Hopkins Hospital. The fellowship is co-sponsored by both Departments of Plastic Surgery and Neurosurgery. For each of the clinical fellows in the program, there is an expected volume of participating in over 110 neuro-cranial reconstructions per year with Dr. Gordon and his neurosurgery colleagues, as well as a large spectrum of complex scalp reconstruction and craniofacial cases. The first surgeon formally trained in "Neuroplastic and Reconstructive Surgery" was Dr. Gabriel Santiago [2016-18], who completed ENT surgery residency in the US Navy prior to starting the fellowship. The first Neuroplastic Surgery Research Fellow was Dr. Amir Wolff [2017-18], an attending oral-maxillofacial surgeon from Rambam Medical Center in Haifa, Israel.

Annual Neuroplastic Surgery Symposium The first Annual Neuroplastic and Reconstructive Surgery Symposium was held at Harvard Medical School/Massachusetts General Hospital in September 2015, co-chaired by Dr. Chad Gordon (Johns Hopkins) and Dr. Michael Yaremchuk (Harvard). Its overarching mission was to increase collaboration, awareness and synergy amongst numerous disciplines including craniofacial plastic surgery, adult-based cranial neurosurgery, biomedical engineering, and neurology for improved patient outcomes. Since then, the symposium has grown significantly and rotates annually between Harvard Medical School/Massachusetts General Hospital (Boston, MA) and Johns Hopkins School of Medicine/Johns Hopkins Hospital (Baltimore, MD). Its main emphasis relates to cranioplasty, implants and implantable neurotechnologies.

Neuroplastic surgery procedures Cranioplasty (or skull reconstruction) Temporal Hollowing Repair Removal of Neurofibroma Tumors in Neurofibromatosis Complex Scalp Reconstruction Craniofacial Approaches to brain tumors Removal of skull and craniofacial tumors Complex Approaches to the spine and spinal cord Complex closures of the back following spine surgery Ventricular Shunt Revision Repair of Cerebrospinal Fluid (CSF) leaks Dural Reconstruction Implantation of Functional Neural Devices

References

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Neuroplastic surgery

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Neuroplastic surgery claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In biology, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Neuroplastic surgery before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Neuroplastic surgery ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Neuroplastic surgery

In research: Neuroplastic surgery appears in biology research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Neuroplastic surgery in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Neuroplastic surgery is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Neurology, Neurosurgery, Plastic surgery, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Neuroplastic surgery outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Neuroplastic surgery in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Neuroplastic surgery means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Neuroplastic surgery out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Neuroplastic surgery in simple terms?

Why does Neuroplastic surgery matter?

Because it connects several biology ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Neuroplastic surgery?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Neuroplastic surgery.