Neurosurgery or neurological surgery, known in common parlance as brain surgery, is the medical specialty concerned with the surgical treatment of disorders which affect any portion of the nervous system including the brain, spinal cord and peripheral nervous system.
Conjoined twins – popularly referred to as Siamese twins – are twins joined in utero. It is a very rare phenomenon, estimated to occur in anywhere between one in 49,000 births to one in 189,000 births, with a somewhat higher incidence in Southwest Asia and Africa. Approximately half are stillborn, and an additional one-third die within 24 hours. Most live births are female, with a ratio of 3:1.
Dr. Joseph Ransohoff, II was a member of the Ransohoff family and a pioneer in the field of neurosurgery. In addition to training numerous neurosurgeons, his "ingenuity in adapting advanced technologies" saved many lives and even influenced the television program Ben Casey. Among other innovations, he created the first intensive care unit dedicated to neurosurgery, pioneered the use of medical imaging and catheterization in the diagnosis and treatment of brain tumors, and helped define the fields of pediatric neurosurgery and neuroradiology.
Benjamin Solomon Carson Sr. is an American retired neurosurgeon and politician who served as the 17th United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development from 2017 to 2021. A pioneer in the field of neurosurgery, he was a candidate for President of the United States in the 2016 Republican primaries.
The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine (JHUSOM) is the medical school of Johns Hopkins University, a private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1893, the School of Medicine shares a campus with the Johns Hopkins Hospital and Johns Hopkins Children's Center, established in 1889. It has consistently ranked among the top medical schools in the United States in terms of the number/amount of research grants/funding awarded by the National Institutes of Health, among other measures.
90 Minutes in Heaven is a 2004 Christian book written by Don Piper with Cecil Murphey. The book documents the author's death and resurrection experience in 1989. 90 Minutes in Heaven remained on the New York Times Bestseller List for more than five years and has sold over six million copies. The book has also been adapted into a feature-length film, released in theaters on September 11, 2015.
Charles Teo AM is an Australian neurosurgeon.
Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story is a 2009 biographical television drama film directed and co-produced by Thomas Carter, written by John Pielmeier, and starring Cuba Gooding Jr., Kimberly Elise and Aunjanue Ellis. The film is based on the autobiography of neurosurgeon Ben Carson, which was co-written by Cecil Murphey and published under the same title in 1990. A Johnson & Johnson Spotlight Presentation, the movie premiered on TNT on Saturday, February 7, 2009.
Wirginia June Maixner is an Australian neurosurgeon and the director of neurosurgery at the Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne, Australia. She is known for having performed the first auditory brainstem implant on a child in Australia in 2007, and later having separated the conjoined twins, Trishna and Krishna in 2009.
Cecil "Cec" Murphey is an American writer, whose books are in categories such as nonfiction, biography, caregiving, memoir, fiction, and inspirational. He has best sellers to his credit, most notably 90 Minutes in Heaven, a collaboration with Don Piper, and Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story a collaboration with Dr. Ben Carson. Murphey has also written books with other celebrities, such as football player Shaun Alexander, Franklin Graham and Bishop Eddie Long. Murphey is also a public speaker on such topics as Christianity, faith, male sexual abuse, caregiving, and writing.
Dr. Alexa Irene Canady is a retired American medical doctor specializing in pediatric neurosurgery. She was born in Lansing, Michigan and earned both her bachelors and medical degree from the University of Michigan. After completing her residency at the University of Minnesota in 1981, she became the first black woman to become a neurosurgeon. This came after Ruth Kerr Jakoby became the first American woman to be board certified in neurosurgery in 1961.
John Mark Freeman was an American pediatric neurologist specializing in epilepsy. He is known for bringing two long-abandoned treatments for pediatric epilepsy back into popular use. One, the ketogenic diet, is a carefully managed, low-carbohydrate high-fat diet plan that reduces the incidence of seizures in children during and after its use, and the other, the hemispherectomy, is a drastic surgical procedure in which part or all of one highly seizure-prone hemisphere of the brain is removed to alleviate severe epilepsy.
Benjamin Warf is an American pediatric neurosurgeon. Warf was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2012.
Lacena "Candy" Carson is an American author and businesswoman. She is married to former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development and retired neurosurgeon Benjamin Carson and co-founded the Carson Scholars Fund. Alongside her husband, she is the co-author of four books. During her husband's run for the 2016 Republican nomination for President of the United States, Carson was active on the campaign trail doing TV appearances and solo live campaign appearances.
Patrick and Benjamin Binder were conjoined twins, joined at the head, born in Germany in early 1987, and separated at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center on September 7, 1987. They were the first twins to be successfully separated by neurosurgeon Ben Carson, of Baltimore, Maryland. For this operation Carson was able to prepare by studying a three-dimensional physical model of the twins' anatomy. Carson described this separation as the first of its kind, with 23 similar attempted separations ending in the death of one or both twins.
Subramanian Kalyanaraman is an Indian neurosurgeon and a former head of the Department of Neurosurgery at Apollo Hospitals, Chennai. He was known for his pioneering techniques in stereotactic surgery and is an elected fellow of a number of science and medical academies including the National Academy of Medical Sciences and the Indian Academy of Sciences. The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the apex agency of the Government of India for scientific research, awarded him the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, one of the highest Indian science awards for his contributions to Medical Sciences in 1969.
Dr. Basant Kumar Misra is a neurosurgeon specialising in treating brain, spine, cerebrovascular and peripheral nervous system disorders, injuries, pathologies and malformations. He is the Vice-President of the World Federation of Neurosurgical Societies, and the former President of the Asian Australasian Society of Neurological Surgeons, and the Neurological Society of India. He is a recipient of Dr. B. C. Roy Award, the highest medical honour in India.
James Tait Goodrich was an American neurosurgeon. He was the director of the Division of Pediatric Neurosurgery at Montefiore Health System and Professor of Clinical Neurological Surgery, Pediatrics, Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and gained worldwide recognition for performing multiple successful separations of conjoined twins. He assisted in two craniopagus separations with Dr. Alferayan A in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, with the first one done May 5, 2014 and the second one done February 14, 2016. Both pairs were successfully separated and are doing well.
Johns Hopkins Children's Center (JHCC) is a nationally ranked, pediatric acute care children's teaching hospital located in Baltimore, Maryland, adjacent to Johns Hopkins Hospital. The hospital has 196 pediatric beds and is affiliated the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. The hospital is the flagship pediatric member of Johns Hopkins Medicine and is 1 of 2 children's hospital in the network. The hospital provides comprehensive pediatric specialties and subspecialties to infants, children, teens, and young adults aged 0–21 throughout Baltimore and the wider United States. Johns Hopkins Children's Center also sometimes treats adults that require pediatric care. Johns Hopkins Children's Center also features the only ACS verified Level 1 Pediatric Trauma Center in the state. The hospital is directly attached to Johns Hopkins Hospital and is situated near the Ronald McDonald House of Maryland.
Dr Noor ul Owase Jeelani BMed.Sci (Hons), BMBS, MRCS, MBA, MPhil, FRCS (NeuroSurg.) is a Kashmiri-British neurosurgeon and academic. He is a Consultant Paediatric Neurosurgeon at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children (GOSH) and was the Head of the Department of Neurosurgery from 2012 until 2018. He is an Honorary Associate Professor at the Institute of Child Health, University College London. He leads the FaceValue research group in Craniofacial Morphometrics, device design, and clinical outcomes.
