Pain Neurosurgery

Oren Sagher, MD, accepted a position on the neurosurgical faculty at the University of Michigan after completing his residency at the University of Virginia. He became Chief of Neurosurgery at the Ann Arbor Veterans Administration Hospital, a position he held until 1996. He then completed a fellowship in Pain and Functional Neurosurgery at the Oregon Health Sciences University, and took over as the Director of Neuromodulation at the University of Michigan. As the primary functional neurosurgeon at the University of Michigan, Dr. Sagher takes care of such problems as epilepsy, pain, Parkinson's Disease, and other movement disorders. Dr. Sagher is board certified by the American Board of Neurological Surgeons, and is a member of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons (AANS) and the Congress of Neurological Surgeons (CNS). He has served on the Executive Council on the AANS/CNS Joint Section on Pain, which he chaired from 2003 to 2005. Emily Levin, MD, graduated from Johns Hopkins University in 2002, where she obtained a bachelor's degree in Biomedical Engineering. She graduated from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine with her Doctor of Medicine. Following completion of her surgical internship and residency in Neurosurgery at the University of Michigan, she completed a fellowship in Stereotactic and Functional Neurosurgery at the University of California, San Francisco. While in San Francisco, she received specialized training in the surgical treatment of movement disorders, such as Parkinson's disease and dystonia. She also focused on surgery for treating epilepsy and pain. She is currently a Clinical Assistant Professor of Neurosurgery at University of Michigan and the Chief of Neurosurgery for the Ann Arbor Veterans Affairs Medical Center. Julie G. Pilitsis, MD, is a Professor of Neurosurgery and of Neuroscience at Albany Medical College and Chair for the Department of Neuroscience and Experimental Therapeutics. She completed her neurosurgery residency at Wayne State University in Detroit, MI. During that time, she also obtained a PhD in neurophysiology and became active in both basic science and translational research. She went on to complete a fellowship in Functional Neurosurgery at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, IL. To date, she has served as Chair of the Joint Section on Pain of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons (AANS)/Congress of Neurological Surgeons (CNS) as well as AANS/CNS Chair of Joint Section for Women in Neurosurgery. She is currently an Executive Council Member of the American Society for Stereotactic and Functional Neurosurgery, Scientific Program for the AANS, and on the NANS Board of Directors. With the support of the NANS Board of Directors, she began the NANS Women in Neuromodulation Section where she was the first chair and currently serves as senior advisor. Dr. Pilitsis maintains an NIH sponsored research program focused on device optimization for neuromodulation and has published over 100 journal articles, 4 books, and numerous chapters. She serves as section editor of functional neurosurgery in Operative Neurosurgery, is on the editorial board of Neuromodulation, and sits on multiple NIH study sections.

Chapter 1: Idiopathic Trigeminal Neuralgia in the Healthy Patient
Oren Sagher
Chapter 2: Idiopathic Trigeminal Neuralgia in the Elderly
Kunal Raygor, Anthony Lee, and Edward Chang
Chapter 3: Secondary Trigeminal Neuralgia (Balloon Compression Rhizolysis)
Jeffrey A. Brown
Chapter 4: Glossopharyngeal Neuralgia
Oren Sagher
Chapter 5: Trigeminal Neuropathic Pain
Mandana A. Behbahani, Nauman S. Chaudhry, Konstantin V. Slavin
Chapter 6: Postherpetic Neuralgia: Motor Cortex Stimulation and Nucleus Caudalis DREZ Lesioning
Sebastian Rubino, Roy S. Hwang, and Julie G. Pilitsis
Chapter 7: Occipital Neuralgia
Richard L. Weiner
Chapter 8: Geniculate Neuralgia
Emily Lehmann Levin
Chapter 9: Dorsal Root Entry Zone (DREZ) lesioning for Brachial Plexus Avulsion Pain
Daniel R. Cleary and Sharona Ben-Haim
Chapter 10: Percutaneous Cordotomy for Cancer-associated Pain
Marian Bercu, Timothy Shepherd, and Alon Y. Mogilner
Chapter 11: Spinal Cord Injury Transitional Zone Pain
Oren Sagher
Chapter 12: Chronic Lumbar Radiculopathy: Spinal Cord Stimulation and Intrathecal Drug Delivery
Brian J.A. Gill, Farhan A. Khan, Christopher J. Winfree
Chapter 13: Intrathecal Drug Therapy for Painful Vertebral Metastases
Sebastian Rubino, Shelby Sabourin, and Julie G. Pilitsis
Chapter 14: Pelvic/Visceral Cancer Pain
Ashwin Viswanathan
Chapter 15: Painful Diabetic Neuropathy
Emily Lehmann Levin
Chapter 16: Cluster Headache
Emily Lehmann Levin
Chapter 17: Postherpetic Neuralgia of the Trigeminal Nerve (Trigeminal Tractotomy-Nucleotomy)
Zoe Teton and Ahmed M. Raslan
Chapter 18: Cingulotomy for Intractable Pain
Patrick J. Hunt, Patrick J. Karas, Ashwin Viswanathan, and Sameer A. Sheth
Chapter 19: Trigeminal Neuropathic Pain: Motor Cortex Stimulation
Nicholas C. Field and Julie G. Pilitsis
Chapter 20: Occipital Nerve Stimulation for Chronic Refractory Migraine
Cletus Cheyuo, Roy S. Hwang, and Julie G. Pilits
Chapter 21: Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS) Diagnosis and Surgical Management Roy S. Hwang, Claire Collison, and Julie G. Pilitsis
Chapter 22: Post-Stroke Intractable Pain
Innocent Njoku and Julie G. Pilitsis