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Three qualities characterized Harvey Cushing and his protégé Franc Ingraham, who established the Department of Neurosurgery at Children's Hospital Boston in 1929: technical skill, insatiable curiosity, and an awareness that learning is to be shared. Those qualities live in the neurosurgeons, nurses and technical staff that treat every child seen in the Neurosurgery Department today.
Cushing was known as an extraordinarily skilled and meticulous surgeon and demanded the same from those he hired and trained. He was also an inventor and a skeptic. As the new field developed, new surgical practices were adopted, but also carefully tested to see that they actually did benefit patients. Publication and the training of new surgeons were part of the department's core mission.
Today, the same spirit of innovation and testing drives the department's surgeons. New surgical techniques, such as pial synangiosis for moyamoya or endoscopic third ventriculostomy for treating hydrocephalus, have been developed or tested at Children's Hospital, as have programmable shunts for hydrocephalus and vagus nerve stimulation for epilepsy. The high level of technical skill, collaboration and access to the newest research make Children's Hospital a leader in the field.
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