Duke Neurosurgery

09/26/2025

A huge THANK YOU to the surgical technicians who make everything we do in the operating room possible. 🎉👏 Surgical techs are vital and keep the operating room clean and safe every step of the way.

09/17/2025

Congratulations to Christina Cone, DNP, MBA, ANP-BC, AOCNP on being named the associate deputy director of the Preston Robert Tisch Brain Tumor Center at Duke! Read more:

Christina Cone, DNP, MBA, ANP-BC, AOCNP, has been named associate deputy director of the Preston Robert Tisch Brain Tumor Center at Duke.

08/29/2025

Our chair Gerald Grant, MD spent today at Penn Medicine Neurosurgery as the 2025 Leslie N. Sutton Lecturer with a Grand Rounds talk on the blood-brain barrier (and an obligatory Duke Men's Basketball mention 😉).

08/20/2025

It's been 10 years since Duke Neurosurgery became a full department in the Duke University School of Medicine! We're celebrating by highlighting 10 milestones from the last 10 years.

Get more details at https://neurosurgery.duke.edu/about/innovation-and-impact.

We're excited to see what comes next!

08/04/2025

✈️ Gerald Grant, MD, and Nandan Lad, MD, traveled to Singapore to present on innovation in neurosurgery at the National Neuroscience Institute's Innovation Day 2025: Brain and Beyond - and visited Duke-NUS Medical School.

🧠 Dr. Grant spotlighted breakthroughs in gene therapy, quantitative, MRI, and brain wearables - even imagining neurosurgical tools that adapt to a patient's emotion or intent - in "Neurosurgery: 2030 and Beyond".

🧠 Dr. Lad highlighted "How AI is Shaping the Future of Neurosurgery": looking at how AI and advanced imaging are transforming how we plan brain and spine surgeries and highlighted improving tremor outcomes using HIFU.

06/26/2025

Congratulations and best wishes on the next leg of the journey, residents!

06/19/2025

“There is a greater chance for plasticity or rewiring of the brain if we treat as young as possible, which is also why it is so gratifying as a pediatric neurosurgeon to treat children with severe , since we can have such enormous impact on their lives,” said Gerald Grant, MD, pediatric neurosurgeon and chair of the Duke Dept. of Neurosurgery, in this newly published article.
https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/early-surgical-referral-key-pharmacoresistant-epilepsy-2025a1000gbu

06/18/2025

Listen to Henry Friedman, MD, of the Preston Robert Tisch Brain Tumor Center at Duke discuss a breakthrough in the treatment of glioma -- a drug with deep Duke roots.

A 'Game-Changer' for Certain Glioma Patients A new and promising breakthrough has emerged in the fight against glioma with the approval of a drug call...

06/12/2025

One minute Adam Holbrook would be having an ordinary day — shopping, walking down the street, coaching a Little League game — and the next he would find himself back on combat patrol: heart racing, adrenaline coursing, the feel of his rifle in his hands, the odor of burn pits in his nose, in a world of dusty rooftops and dim alleys that all held the threat of danger and death.

It didn’t take much to trigger a flashback. The waft of a particular smell could do it, or even a glimpse of the sawtooth mountain range behind his house: suddenly they weren’t the mountains of Arizona, but of Afghanistan.

“And snap, I’d be back there,” said Holbrook, a U.S. Army platoon leader in Iraq and Afghanistan from 2009-2013. “It would be like I never left. Suddenly, I’m on patrol again.”

The episodes were frequent, unpredictable, and sometimes so powerful that he suffered seizures and blacked out. He was diagnosed with severe Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder .He tried every therapy his doctors recommended, but the dissociative episodes continued. Living a normal life was impossible. Living at all began to seem nearly so.

“The way I was going,” Holbrook said, “I was going to be a statistic.”

Then, via the VA Clinic in Rancho Cucamonga, California, he was referred to psychiatrist Ralph Koek, MD; neurosurgeon Jean-Phillipe Langevin, MD; and neuroscientist Nanthia Suthana, PhD, who was then at UCLA.

Suthana, who joined the Duke Department of Neurosurgery earlier this year as a Duke Science and Technology Scholar, studies the neural mechanisms of cognition and behavior. At Duke, she is using advanced neuroimaging and electrophysiology technologies to investigate and treat neurological and psychiatric disorders.

When she met with Holbrook, she was working alongside Koek and Langevin to prepare a clinical trial to test a novel deep brain electrostimulation technique for severe PTSD.

“They did some tests and said, ‘You’re a candidate for this test we’re doing that involves a device we implant in your skull,’” Holbrook said. “By then, I was willing to try anything. So I was like, ‘Wow. OK, cool. Let’s do that.’”

She’s mapping the brain in bold new ways and the ripple effects are already reaching patients. How Nanthia Suthana’s cutting-edge brain stimulation technique is shaping treatments for post-traumatic stress disorder, Parkinson’s, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and binge eating.

06/04/2025

Share the news!

As people are now surviving longer with cancer, many of them come to see their cancer metastasize (spread) to the brain or spine.

People whose cancer has metastasized to the brain or spine have more options and more HOPE than ever before. Advancements in research and patient care are helping patients live longer, healthier lives.

Help us spread awareness. Go to brainspinemetastasis.org for resources and shareables. https://neurosurgery.duke.edu/brain-spine-metastasis-month

05/16/2025

The final program has been posted! Take a look!

This special event will focus on mentorship and life after a brain aneurysm, bringing together patients, caregivers, and experts to share insights and experiences.

https://neurosurgery.duke.edu/duke-brain-aneurysm-symposium-2025

05/12/2025

Mustafa Khasraw, MD, will lead the U.S. arm of a new, international glioblastoma trial.

"Research from our group and others has shown that immunotherapy given before the surgical removal of cancer can reprogram the immune response, even in recurrent gliomas,” Khasraw said. “With this trial, we are moving that approach earlier, into newly diagnosed disease, to test whether this combination of immune checkpoint blockades can drive stronger and more lasting improvements in patient outcomes."
https://www.dukecancerinstitute.org/blogs/mustafa-khasraw-lead-us-arm-international-glioblastoma-trial