Dr Vini Gautam Khurana is a Mayo Clinic-trained neurosurgeon with an advanced neurosurgery Fellowship in cerebral vascular and tumour microsurgery from the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix, Arizona. He holds active medical registration with the Medical Boards of the Australian Capital Territory and the State of New South Wales, Australia. He is the only Australian medical graduate to have completed an entire neurosurgical training programme, PhD and Fellowship in the United States of America, where he trained and worked for 10 years.

November 2007: Dr Khurana's Neurosurgery Team wins the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) Quality in Health Care Award for Patient Safety.

May 2008: ACT Government announces multimillion dollar investment in the development of an advanced neurosurgery operating suite with intraoperative MRI at The Canberra Hospital.

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His specialty interests in intracranial microsurgery include...

Cerebrovascular Surgery: For the surgical treatment of brain aneurysms, arteriovenous malformations (AVM) and cavernous malformations (cavernoma) including those involving the brainstem; brain bypass surgery; and carotid endarterectomy for carotid stenosis.

Complex Brain Tumour Surgery: For tumours of the skull base (including acoustic neuroma or vestibular and trigeminal Schwannoma, pituitary adenoma, cranio-pharyngioma and meningioma), brainstem and craniocervical junction.

Microvascular Decomp-ression (MVD): For trigeminal neuralgia (tic douloureux), hemifacial spasm and glossopharyngeal neuralgia.

Salvage Neurosurgery: Appropriate, aggressive surgery for "recurrent", "persistent" or "inoperable" brain tumours. Operating on astrocytoma or glioma as early as possible following diagnosis is a high priority as these tumours become more malignant with time -- "Observing" these types of tumours is not recommended by Dr Khurana.

Minimal-Access Neuro- surgery: Using advanced intraoperative image-guidance (neuronavigation) technology and unique, comprehensively validated operative approaches to optimise the accuracy and safety of neurosurgery, and to reduce incision and craniotomy sizes to the smallest and safest possible. Dr Khurana also utilises a "minimal-shave" technique for scalp incisions. He believes minimal-access surgical approaches logically allow for safer surgery, earlier and optimal recoveries, and shorter lengths of stay.

Awake Brain Surgery-Awake Craniotomy: For CERTAIN (select) patients with tumours or vascular malformations in highly eloquent (highly functionally important) parts of the brain, Dr Khurana and his team offer a specialised and successful Awake Brain Surgery/Awake Craniotomy Service as a means of obtaining as complete a resection as possible while having the patient awake, pain-free and comfortable and neurologically testable during ONLY the critical parts of the surgery. For all other parts of the operation, the patient is kept asleep.