Do I need surgery? Are there other options such as medication, therapy or other treatment alternatives such as radiation or chemotherapy? What are the risks of treatment? What are warning signs that I should look out for that might make surgery necessary?

The most commons neurosurgical procedures are spinal surgeries for decompression and/or fusion. In the brain, the most common surgeries are for brain tumors and blood clots. However, many neurosurgeons specialize and focus on only a few areas or types of operations.

Neurosurgery is a very broad field and includes many different areas of specialization. The common areas of specialization include neuro-oncologic surgery, cerebrovascular neurosurgery, skull base neurosurgery, functional neurosurgery and spine surgery. Because many of these cases are rare, it is common for surgeons to have practices that incorporate more than one area of subspecializing.

Vascular neurosurgical problems include brain aneurysms, vascular malformations and narrowing of the internal carotid artery and its branches either in the neck or brain. Cerebrovascular neurosurgeons treat these problems in one of two ways: either by open neurosurgery or endovascular neurosurgery.

Open neurosurgery means making a hole in the skull to clip an aneurysm, remove an AVM or bypass a clogged artery in the brain. In contrast, endovascular neurosurgery means a problem is treated with a catheter from within the artery (usually accessed through an artery in the groin) through which clots can be removed and arteries stented open, or aneurysms and vascular malformations filled with glue or coils. Many cerebrovascular problems require a team approach with input from both types of techniques.