Dr.Aadil Shaukat Chagla , Neurosurgeon

SURGICAL EXPERIENCE

I have performed both, elective and emergency operations dealing with trauma, tumors, congenital and developmental anomalies, vascular and infective lesions and degenerative diseases.

As a Professor at the King Edward Memorial Hospital, the largest Municipal Hospital in Mumbai which caters to a population of over 20 million people, I need to perform surgeries on a wide spectrum of cases in neurosurgical practice. I am, however, drawn to the challenges of vascular surgery and lesions involving the sellar and suprasellar locations such as giant craniopharyngiomas. I fancy surgical excision of lesions in the peri-sylvian area particularly around the speech area and the motor strip. I also like to operate on intraventricular tumors which are often huge in our part of the world. Colloid cysts and posterior third ventricular tumors are also part of my areas of interest.

I was fortunate to receive training as a neurosurgeon at Sree Chitra Tirunal Institute for Medical Sciences and Technology, Thiruvanathapuram, which is the premiere institute in the country for Vascular Neurosurgery and large skull base tumors. I have had microsurgical training in different approaches to third ventricular, sellar / suprasellar, pineal region cerebello-pontine angle and orbital tumors. I was also posted at the National Institute for Mental health and Neurosciences, Bangalore, where I was taught aspects of Neurosurgery including trauma, peripheral nerve surgery and stereotaxy which were complementary to Sree Chitra Tirunal.

I was, then, at the famous Grant Medical College Mumbai as Lecturer where I performed surgery as a Junior Consultant and supervised resident neurosurgeons in their training. I, then moved to Lokmanya Tilak Memorial General Hospital, Mumbai, where I gained experience in spinal surgery which included anterior approach to cervical, trans-thoracic approach to dorsal spine and retroperitoneal and posterior approaches to lumbar spine. This hospital being the first General Hospital on the National Highway exit of the city provided the department with poly trauma and head and spinal injury cases. I therefore along with other orthopedic and general surgeons operated on fractures of the spine and performed various stabilization procedures. This also inuded corpectomy, inter-body fusion, pedicular screws and plate and lateral mass fusion.

I was then invited to join the Tata Memorial Hospital, Mumbai which is the foremost cancer hospital in the country where I perform anterior/antero-lateral craniofacial and lateral temporal bone resections and pre-auricular infratemporal / transsphenoidal / transoral approaches to skull base tumor along with my Head, Neck and E N T colleagues.