Neurosurgeons are surgeons with specialized training in the entire nervous system: the brain, the spine, and the peripheral nerves that branch out from the spinal cord to the rest of the body.

In practice that means a great deal of what we treat is pain rather than anything exotic. Neck and back pain, sciatica, pinched nerves, and pain that radiates into an arm or a leg all fall squarely within a neurosurgeon’s training, because all of them come back to how nerves are being affected.

No, and this is the single most common misconception we correct. Our approach to pain is conservative by design. Nonsurgical options come first whenever we believe they can help, and for most patients they are where care begins and ends.

Surgery enters the conversation only when we believe there is no other way to resolve the condition or manage the symptoms. Booking a consultation with a neurosurgeon is not a step toward the operating room. It is a step toward finding out what is actually wrong.

The word to focus on is intervene. Our interventional pain management specialist uses minimally invasive procedures to interrupt pain signals before they reach you, rather than only masking them with medication afterward.

That work includes steroid injections, joint injections, and other targeted therapies, placed precisely where the problem is. For many patients this is the treatment that resolves things, which is exactly why it sits ahead of surgery in how we sequence care.

It is still surgery. What changes is how we get there. Minimally invasive techniques avoid large open incisions, working instead through very small openings, often around an inch.

We pass a small camera through that opening and view the procedure on a large display, then work with small, precise instruments. Because far less tissue is disturbed along the way, recovery is usually one to two weeks at most, and scarring is typically less than it would be with traditional open surgery.

These two tests answer a question imaging often cannot: whether your nerves and muscles are actually working the way they should. Our clinical electrophysiology department is staffed by physical therapists who are board-certified electrophysiologic clinical specialists trained to perform both studies.

Nerve conduction study (NCS)

Also called a nerve conduction velocity or NCV test, this measures how fast an electrical impulse travels along a nerve. The nerve is stimulated with a small current, felt as a brief electrical pulse, while adhesive electrodes on the skin record the response. Several nerves are tested and compared against normal values to identify evidence of nerve damage.

Electromyography (EMG)

This assesses the health of muscles and the motor neurons that control them. A very fine needle is placed into a muscle and its electrical activity is recorded. The results help reveal whether a problem sits in the nerve, in the muscle, or at the junction between the two.

No. You do not need to arrive with a scan already in hand, and you should not delay being seen in order to get one. We are glad to schedule an evaluation without any prior imaging.

X-ray and nerve testing are available at each of our locations, and if your evaluation calls for anything further we will refer you for it. If you do already have imaging from elsewhere, bring the images themselves along with the written report, since the report alone is rarely enough to work from.

We know you may be in a lot of pain right now, so we will do everything we can to get you in the next day. Within 10 days is standard.

If your symptoms are worsening quickly, say so when you call. That changes how your appointment is prioritized.