Speaker: Dr. Andrew H. Jae – Division Chief of Pediatric Neurosurgery

Riley Hospital for Children at Indiana University (IU) Health

Neurosurgeon Goodman Campbell Brain and Spine

Professor Department of Neurological Surgery, IU School of Medicine

 

Dr Jae came to Riley Children’s Hospital a year ago from Houston, TX where he had been in practice for over 10 years.  He is married to Dr Lourdes who is a physician in general medicine.  They have 3 adorable sons.

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Dr Jae presented three interesting topics and encouraged interaction with the group during his presentation.  He showed pictures of intra uterine fetal surgery on infants presenting with different types of spina bifida found on ultrasound.

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They plan this type of surgery after 20 weeks gestation and have had good results when infant is delivered.  They prefer to do the surgeries when there is an option of fetal viability,  if the pregnancy shows an indication of a premature delivery during or after surgery is done.

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The 2nd component of the presentation was on “spinal tethering” which is when the child is growing but the area where the repair was done for the spina bifida has scarred and the spinal cord is not able to grow along with the growth of the spinal column.  Hence the term tethering where the spinal cord is stretched.  They have done 9 of these surgeries and have placed these children in research as the outcome as the child grows more has not been determined yet.

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The 3rd presentation was about minimally invasive surgical innovations developed to help children with intractable seizures.  There are three entities and one was just done for first time at Riley where they were able to introduce a miniature instrument that was able to penetrate deeper into the brain where the seizure foci was found and burn the smaller area to stop the seizure activity. 

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We had over 37 attendees including Kim Harper, Indiana Center for Nursing Executive Director, visiting Philippine Board of Nursing Executives & Nursing Faculty who happen to be attending the Sigma Theta Tau International Convention in Indianapolis, PNA-IN EB and members and other nursing colleagues. Interesting questions were answered by Dr. Jae. All were amazed at the new technology that has been developed just in the past 10 years and are now available in the state of Indiana, thanks to Dr. Jae. The information was very informative and was extremely appreciated by all.