President's Address
Dear Colleague,
Welcome to the American Society of Stereotactic and Functional Neurosurgery (ASSFN). It is my privilege and honor to be the President of this society. Our society is strong and vibrant, and our specialty is one of the most rapidly growing areas in neurosurgery, with tremendous potential and impact for helping patients.
The scope of our field is large, multifaceted and dynamic. Our current surgical management approach for patients with movement disorders, epilepsy, tumors, and chronic pain are durable maturing, and growing. Additional emerging clinical trials are exploring new indications for us to help patients with psychiatric, behavioral and cognitive disorders, as well as traumatic brain injury and stroke. Advances in neuroscience, engineering, imaging, surgical technique, and implantable device technology are facilitating progress in translational research. The use of randomized prospective and blinded clinical trials with class I outcomes are also providing the necessary evidence to enable the broader acceptance and integration of our surgical therapies into the standard management strategies for severe and disabled patients.
In conjunction with advancement in our clinical applications, our surgical technique and approaches and are also evolving. We utilize brain, spinal cord and peripheral nerve stimulators, radiofrequency, radiosurgery and other lesioning approaches, as well as gene therapy and stem cell based interventions. This broad array of therapeutic interventions provides many opportunities for research, development and improvements.
Interaction and collaboration with other specialties is a vital component for the growth and progress of our specialty and society. These multidisciplinary partnerships involve close interfaces and teamwork with neurologists, psychiatrists, psychologists, physical medicine and rehabilitation specialists, pain management, neuroradiologists, physicists, ethicists, biomedical engineers and neuroscientists. We also need to continue to collaborate with the biotech and medical device industry to accelerate the development of next generation devices and expedite clinical trials.
It is indeed an exciting time for the stereotactic and functional neurosurgery specialty. I encourage all neurosurgeons interested in stereotactic and functional neurosurgery and our colleagues from other specialties to become members of our society. Your participation and input can facilitate our vision of promoting multidisciplinary collaboration among clinicians scientists, engineers, and others to advance the filed through education, research, innovation, and advocacy.
Education is fundamentally important for our specialty and upholding the highest standards for teaching, training and dialogue is crucial for the growth and advancement of our field. The society sponsors and coordinates many educational programs. The biennial ASSFN meetings and section events at the CNS and AANS have consistently provided comprehensive, cutting edge, high tech and insightful topics and speakers with an emphasis on high quality scientific exchange and discussion. We will continue to strive to provide first rate, up to date, innovative and creative educational programs for our specialty in the future.
Websites are a universal central medium for search and knowledge acquisition. We are pleased to have launched the new ASSFN website, spearheaded by our webmaster, Kendall Lee and the web committee. Our goal is to provide our members with a more personalized website with ease of access to rapidly updated and accurate information, online educational offerings, fellowships, practice tools, guidelines, outcome measures, as well as socioeconomic, government and regulatory, innovation, and technology related topics and links. Please visit our website at www.assfn.org.
The society is particularly proud of the growth and evolution of our journal, Stereotactic and Functional Neurosurgery. Our Editor, David W. Roberts and the editorial boards have done an outstanding and admirable job in improving our journal with increased number of high quality submissions and impact factor. I encourage you to submit your work to our journal.
Health care reform is multifaceted and of increasing significance in medicine as society and government attempts to maximize health care resources. The healthcare landscape has significantly changed over the past 20 years, and more changes will be forthcoming with healthcare reform legislature that will impact neurosurgeons in the US. The ASSFN works closely with the AANS and the CNS Washington committee to provide fact-based patient centric and management approach for issues such as insurance, CMS and Medicare reimbursement policies, as well as outcome-based research and clinical practice, comparative effectiveness, conflict of interest, and the FDA device and drug related matters. The ASSFN will be active and proactive with legislature and advocacy on behalf of its members to facilitate us staying ahead of the changing curve of medicine.
It is a great privilege and honor to be the President of our society. We have a dedicated and enthusiastic group of Board members and volunteers working hard for our society and specialty. I am committed to working with all of you to keep our society robust and will work diligently to grow and promote stereotactic and functional neurosurgery globally.
Sincerely,Ali R. Rezai MD