Pediatric Neurosurgery

We offer the latest techniques in minimally invasive surgery. For example, our experts can treat hydrocephalus and brain tumors through small, dime-sized incisions in the skull. Benefits of these procedures include shorter recovery times, less pain and fewer surgical risks than traditional surgery.

Information from 3D computer models can help our neurosurgeons identify the exact location of a brain tumor and its relationship to adjacent parts of the brain. Armed with this detailed information, our neurosurgeons can operate with pinpoint accuracy, minimizing trauma to the skull and other brain structures. Neurosurgeons at Comer Children’s often are able to remove tumors more completely than neurosurgeons who do not have this technology, while avoiding damage to the child's development and brain functions.

This emerging field of neurosurgery offers new hope to children with difficult-to-treat diseases such as spasticity and dystonia. In functional pediatric neurosurgery, neurosurgeons implant drug pumps and electric current-producing stimulators to treat children with movement disorders. These approaches affect the function of the nervous system without injuring it, and eliminate the need to remove brain or spine tissue.

Deep brain stimulation — implantation of electric current producing stimulators in the brain — has only recently become widely available across the country for adults with movement disorders. In cooperation with the adult deep brain stimulation program at UChicago Medicine, which is staffed by physicians who pioneered this treatment in adults, we are now offering this treatment to children.