Establishing Cerebrovascular Neurosurgical Programs in Central Africa: A Lifelong Decision to Take

In the present chapter, we describe the situation in modern neurosurgery, where specialized fields are expanding and lead inevitably to the need of specialists. The are dedicated cerebrovascular surgeons who follow the literature and are up-to-date on new methods and developments on their field. To be a master of cerebrovascular surgery needs a lot of time spent exclusively on this subject and less in other neurosurgical fields. The general neurosurgeon who is informed about any aspect of spine, pediatric, cerebrovascular subjects, etc. is not feasible any more. Therefore fellowships train a neurosurgeon on one focused subject, which the individual trainee will become an expert at. Such an expertise is needed in developing countries as well, but the know-how and the equipment is not available in every country. Therefore an expert neurosurgeon should be willing to train local neurosurgeons in their limited resource environments in order to achieve a maximum benefit with the available equipment.