A global destination for innovative head and neck care

Our team pioneered an integrated 6-Pillar Approach that coupled existing technologies with novel enhanced technologies creating a systems approach, consisting of:

1. Personalized Neural Network Planning
2. Dynamic Navigation
3. Radial Trans-sulcal Corridor Access
4. Exoscopic Robotic Optical Visualization
5. Non-thermal Automated Tissue Resection
6. Tissue Preservation to drive personalized tissue driven therapeutics.

This integrated surgical approach further evolved to the current Minimally Invasive Parafascicular Approach (MIPS) that our team pioneered and has taught at other institutions around the country.

Dr. Kassam’s defining experience over the first decade of globally pioneering the procedure was featured as the cover article of the prestigious Journal of Neurological Surgery.

Dr. Kassam also founded the initial and most widely regarded program in the nation for training other surgeons on this minimally invasive surgical approach, as well as initiating and hosting the first World Congress on Endoscopy of the Skull Base in 2005.

This surgical technique is founded on technologies that Dr. Kassam helped pioneer and was the first in the world to translate from innovation labs to direct patient care.

The innovative procedure employs machine-learning systems to map the entire human brain in 15 minutes, a machine-interfaced exoscopic robot arm and the conscious surgery technique to preserve critical brain functions.

Our team’s pursuit of developing personalized road maps of the neural networks below the brain surface using Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning algorithms, allows us to create personalized approaches for each individual patient protecting the most important functions, such as, memory, thought and consciousness. We have termed this approach conscious surgery.

Conscious surgery is distinct from awake surgery in that patients are able to think and converse throughout the whole procedure rather than being unconscious (sedated) at the start and the end of the procedure as is the case with traditional “awake surgery.” During traditional awake-asleep-awake (AAA) surgery it can be difficult to maintain the patient at a level of consciousness that is needed to monitor critical thought and cognitive function.

With the pioneering of our minimally invasive approaches we can access the regions of the brain using an integrated systems approach using a relatively small incision in a targeted and efficient manner. This limits the time and access requirements minimizing the need for the initial approach related and subsequent closure related sedation. This allows us to focus the procedure on the critical removal portion of the procedure, allowing the patient to be conscious throughout without minimal sedation and comfortable Patients receive a local anesthesia block and minimal doses of other medications to ensure that they remain pain-free and calm throughout the procedure.

By keeping our patients conscious and minimizing sedation, and by engaging their loved ones in the operating room or an OR-gallery experience, we interact with patients and closely monitor their cognition, memory, thoughts and emotions, the very things that make us individuals and determine our quality of life. Without being conscious, there is no other way to monitor these higher order functions that make us each the individuals we are. Dr. Kassam published the first report of conscious surgery of the upper brainstem and third ventricle — both among the most difficult to access in the human brain — using the innovative technology developed by Dr. Kassam and his partners.