HJAR Jan/Feb 2021

HEALTHCARE JOURNAL OF ARKANSAS I  JAN / FEB 2021 49 Ali Krisht, MD, FACS Director Arkansas Neuroscience Institute at CHI St. Vincent When people think of neurosurgery, their impression of the field almost always centers around the brain itself and what they know, or often don’t know, about brain surgery. In truth, neurosurgery as a field, while often specializing in the treatment of disorders of the brain, reaches far beyond the brain itself to include a wide range of issues affecting the human nervous system. That includes specialized care for the spine and spinal cord surgery. At the CHI St. Vincent Arkansas Neurosci- ence Institute (ANI) in Sherwood, our team of neurosurgeons regularly provide care for patients suffering from spinal disc herniation, infections, tumors and spinal cord trauma. As we work to constantly elevate the level of care and further improve outcomes for these patients, though, the level of special- ized care required reaches far beyond our neurosurgeons themselves. The renovations to CHI St. Vincent North in recent years, in order to serve the unique needs of neurosurgery patients, did not end with the physical construction of the project. Rather, that process triggered the beginning of a far more significant education and spe- cialization of our staff. Beyond a new state of the art facility, we constructed an alignment across our healthcare staff where everyone in this hospital is thinking about neurosur- gery problems, brain problems and spinal cord problems. We built a new helipad, not just so trauma patients can reach the hospital faster, but so they can reach a specialized team of nurses, doctors and other healthcare providers who possess a unique degree of insight into the specialized care that a patient will need as they begin their treatment and throughout their recovery. This, more than anything, is the secret to elevating care for our patients and the ideal scenario for them to achieve great outcomes. Why Specialization Matters My particular areas of expertise include cerebrovascular problems, such as strokes and aneurysms; pituitary gland tumors; and skull base tumors, which are located so close to critical nerves and blood vessels in the brain, neck and spinal cord that they can po- tentially cause problems such as paralysis. The nerves in this region are so delicate that the only way you can preserve the ability to function is if you work very slowly and very diligently. In some cases, I have needed to operate on a patient for as long as 26 hours. You simply don’t always know what you will find until you actually begin work on a patient’s brain or spinal cord. You may feel like you have to keep going and going, and to continue on that scale while maintaining the highest standards of care requires endurance. It requires endur- ance, skill, commitment and true dedication from the entire team providing that care, not just the neurosurgeon. The human resources we’ve developed here, focused so intensely on addressing neurological disorders, really elevates the level of care for our patients to a standard that can become the model for everyone in the world to come and see. At ourANI Research and Education Center, we’ve taken this focus a step even further with a state-of-the-art microsurgical labora- tory. ANI’s Dr. Emad Aboud, MD, has devel- oped the innovative Aboud Model, a way to use cadavers to simulate almost any kind of brain or spine surgery. Not only is his method an incredible advancement for medicine, but it allows our surgeons and nurses to work alongside each other to gain experience and perfect new techniques long before we put them into practice in the operating rooms. This way our nurses and the rest of our teams instinctively know every step of the process throughout the surgery, so they can antici- pate needs. I have at various times been asked about the secret to success, whether that has to do with the medical field or life in general. For me, the answer is simple. I work hard to sur- round myself with very good and talented people. Because of this depth of experience we’ve built, there’s no doubt that we’re able to more safely operate on patients and get them home faster in a much more functional state than ever before, but there’s still more work to be done. Through education and research, we as healthcare providers continue with the promise that we’ll learn something new each day and do our work better tomorrow. This way, as a team, we can continue to elevate the level of care for all our patients. n “We constructed an alignment across our healthcare staff where everyone in this hospital is thinking about neurosurgery problems, brain problems and spinal cord problems.”