Science AMA Series: I am Sumeet Vadera, a neurosurgeon who specializes
in epilepsy surgery at University of California, Irvine, Ask Me
Anything!
Abstract
Hi Reddit. My name is Sumeet Vadera and I am Director of Epilepsy
Surgery at University of California, Irvine. I did my Neurosurgery and
Epilepsy Surgery training at the Cleveland Clinic. Here is a link to my
profile page
http://www.ucirvinehealth.org/find-a-doctor/v/sumeet-vadera/. Here are
some aspects of my career that might be interesting to the Reddit
community - 1) As an epilepsy surgeon, we have a variety of surgeries
that we perform that can be broken down into diagnostic and therapeutic
procedures. Diagnostic procedures require implanting electrodes within
the brain to localize where the seizures are coming from. I have written
several papers that have to do with this technique
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=vadera+s. I also have a
neurosurgical robot at UCI that helps me perform these surgeries and
they recently wrote about the robot and our surgeries in the OC Register
http://www.ocregister.com/articles/brain-650683-device-surgery.html
Therapeutic procedures are performed after we know where the seizures
are coming from and these include resections (temporal lobectomy,
hemispherectomy, etc) and implantation of neurostimulators. 2) I wrote a
paper that was published last month in Journal of Surgical Education
looking at “National Incidence of Medication Error in Surgical Patients
Before and After Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education
Duty-Hour Reform.” This is something that has never been looked at
before and has some really interesting results. We showed that since the
80 hour Duty Restriction for resident training, there has been a spike
in medication errors within teaching hospitals.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26089160 3) We use high tech tools to
treat patients with epilepsy. I have robots, lasers and neurostimulator
devices that assist me in treating patients who have epilepsy that fails
medications. I’ll be back at 3 pm EST (12 pm PST, 9 pm UTC) to answer
Ask me anything about about epilepsy surgery, neurosurgery in general,
or residency training. EDIT1: Finished my case early today, I’m here to
answer questions now. EDIT2: Dr Jack Lin, Director of Epilepsy Neurology
at UCI has joined me to answer questions related to the neurology side
of epilepsy surgery. EDIT3: Thank you for all the great questions, I
hope this was helpful for everyone. I will check tonight if there are
any more questions so keep them coming. Feel free to email me at
[email protected]. We also are doing some exciting research at UCI
and we are always looking for good people to get involved. Feel free to
contact me about that as well.