Stereotactic & Functional Neurosurgery
Aviva Abosch, MD, PhD, tries on a 3D-printed replica of a stereotactic head frame and fiducial localizer box developed at UNMC to help patients overcome anxiety as they prepare for deep-brain stimulation surgery.
Led by two of the nation's experts, Drs. Aviva Abosch and Josue Avecillas-Chasin, our division provides all-encompassing opportunities for our trainees in the evaluation, management, and surgery for functional disorders of the nervous system.
Our team works in close collaboration with the Department of Neurological Sciences, epilepsy, movement disorders, and anesthesiology in a multidisciplinary environment.
Our faculty members provide care through UNMC's primary clinical partner, Nebraska Medicine, which offers a Level 4 Epilepsy Center. Trainees have unparalleled opportunities to learn through this center's full breath of treatments for epilepsy, movement disorders and chronic pain, including:
- Frame-based and frameless deep brain stimulation
- Minimally invasive image-guided approaches
- Laser ablation
- Robotic approaches
- Intrathecal drug delivery pump implants
- Stereotactic encephalography for epilepsy
- Open surgical resections
- Awake surgical resection of epilepsy foci
- Responsive neurostimulation
- Spinal cord stimulation
- Peripheral nerve stimulation
- Vagus nerve stimulation
- Microvascular decompression
- Trigeminal rhyzotomies
- Stereotactic radiosurgery
Trainees will learn approaches using state-of-the-art brain mapping and neurophysiological techniques to treat many neurological disorders including:
- Epilepsy
- Parkinson’s disease
- Tremor
- Dystonia
- Tourette syndrome
- Tardive syndromes
- Spasticity
- Hemifacial spasm
- Cancer pain
- Persistent low back pain after repeated spine surgery (failed back syndrome)
- Trigeminal neuralgia
- Glossopharyngeal neuralgia
- Anesthesia dolorosa
- Trigeminal neuropathic pain
- Complex regional pain syndrome
Our faculty scientists work to develop new treatments for other severe neurological and psychiatric conditions. Our faculty is part of several international and national clinical trials and research projects to find effective treatments for:
- Addiction
- Alzheimer disease
- Post-traumatic stress disorder
- Obsessive compulsive disorder
- Deep brain stimulation for chronic pain
- Anxiety
Faculty
Nancy A. Keegan and Donald R. Voelte Jr. Chair in Neurosurgery
Inaugural Chair, UNMC Department of Neurosurgery
Professor, UNMC Department of Neurosurgery
Co-Director of the Neurosciences Services, Nebraska Medicine
