A neurosurgeon's chances of being sued for malpractice are not necessarily related to the medical complexity of a particular case but rather to the types of cases with which the physician is involved. Elective spinal surgery cases constitute the majority of litigation. Neurosurgeons can take steps to reduce their vulnerability to potential litigation and to increase the odds of a successful defense.

The number of recruitment advertisements for neurosurgeons during the last 5 years has increased significantly, concomitant with a severe decline in the number of active neurosurgeons and a static supply of residents.

Irving S. Cooper was a pioneer in the field of functional neurosurgery. During his very productive and controversial career, he proposed the surgical treatment of Parkinson disease (PD) by ligating the anterior choroidal artery to control tremor and rigidity. Subsequently, he developed seminal techniques for chemopallidectomy and cryothalamectomy for PD. He also attempted to use electrical stimulation of the cerebellum or the thalamus to treat spasticity. Cooper continued his work on brain stimulation until his death in 1985. He made video recordings of nearly all of his patients during his tenure (1977–1985) at New York Medical College. Cooper's clinical video recordings were reviewed, and selected footage was compiled into a video history of Cooper's surgical management of various movement disorders. Included are pre-, post-, and some intraoperative recordings that Cooper made to document his treatment of patients with PD, tremor, Wilson disease, cerebral palsy, chorea, dystonia musculorum deformans, and some rarer entities.

Discrepancies with the results of other published studies, procedural limitations in study design, and lack of some data endpoints and subgroup analysis raise concerns regarding extracting generalizations from the conclusions of ISAT. We think that the creation of a national registry would further the study of treatment of ruptured intracranial aneurysms.