The Neurovascular Disease Management Course: A Medical Student Opportunity for Early Exposure and Technical Development in Vascular Neurosurgery

Background: As endovascular neurosurgery techniques continue to evolve, medical students in the United States have widely varying exposures to the field, particularly with respect to opportunities for hands-on experiences. Current medical school curricula could benefit from a novel and adaptive course on vascular neurosurgery to increase student exposure earlier in their training.

Methods: We launched a yearly hands-on vascular neurosurgery course for medical students and residents. The day-long course is a combination of lectures focused on neurovascular disease and management accompanied by hands-on sessions where students practiced fundamental microsurgery and angiography techniques using real microscopes and angiography simulators. We surveyed the students before and after each of the 2 courses. The survey following the second annual course included quiz questions the students had not previously seen.

Results: Over 2 courses, we had 149 attendees, 71.8% of which were first and second-year medical students representing fifteen institutions. The average survey completion rate was 41.4% for the 4 surveys across the 2 courses. Attendees' interest in pursuing a surgical specialty (t = 1.815, P = 0.039) along with their comfort with neuroanatomy (t = 8.780, P ≤ 0.001) and neurosurgical disease (t = 6.133, P ≤ 0.001) was significantly elevated after the completion of the second course. Responses to the post-survey showed a good grasp of the fundamentals with 68% of attendees answering 70% of the quiz questions correctly.

Conclusions: An interactive course on vascular neurosurgery may be an effective vehicle to provide medical students with exposure to the field and the opportunity to learn the fundamentals.