Condell Thinks Big on Brain Surgery

Chicago Tribune

Some procedures are firsts for Lake

Until this year, Jeff Rizner would have had to travel to one of the Chicago area's largest hospitals for the complicated neurosurgery that he needed after he woke up and realized he couldn't move his right arm and right leg or talk.

Instead, the Libertyville man found the expertise he needed three minutes from his home.

This year, Condell Medical Center in Libertyville has been expanding its services so that it can offer complex neurosurgical procedures that, until now, have not been available in Lake County.

Rizner, who underwent surgery in February to remove a blood clot and treat a brain hemorrhage, said the benefits are immense of having such treatment in the county.

“I felt most comfortable knowing that my home was a few blocks away.” Rizner said, “It's frightening when you wake up one day and are completely paralyzedon one side. But since I live in Libertyville and work in Lake Bluff, I had a lot of people stop by after surgery and during my rehabilitation.”

The surgery on Rizner was a milestone for Condell, because it was the first such procedure in a facility in Lake County, Condell officials said. Previously, patients would have been referred to Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge, the University of Chicago Hospitals or hospitals in Rockford or Milwaukee.

Neurosurgery involves treatiing disorders of the brain, spinal cord and peripheral nerves. Condell has acquired the capacity to diagnose and treat: brain disorders such as tumors,aneurysms and hydrocephalus; spinal disorders such as tumors, herniated discs and spinal stenosis; and peripheral nerve disorders such as ulnar neurophaty and carpal tunnel syndrome.

Since Rizner's surgery in February, Dr. Jonathan Citow, chief neurosurgeon at Condell and assistant clinical professor of neurosurgery at the University of Chicago Medical Center, and his partners, Dr. Sheldon Lazar and Dr. Jeffrey Karasick, have performed more than 65 complex neurosurgeries in Condell. During the previous year, 15 such surgeries had been performed in Condell, and they were somewhat less complex, Citow said.

Condell is striving to expand its services to become a top quality center to treat complex brain and spinal cord disorders, making an initial investment of $1 million to acquire new technology and special training for support staff, said Chris Visick, spokeswoman for Condell.

For example, Citow said, special retractors are now being used to remove a herniated disc through a thumbnail-size incision in a patient's back.

He said Condell plans to develop the neurosurgery area into a brain and spinal cord institute in the next three years.

Early next year, the hospital plans to acquire an image-guided neurological system to create three-dimensional pictures of the brain that doctors can view during surgery, hospital officials said.

Citow said the $700,000 piece of equipment “allows the surgeon to see the boundaries of the tumor more precisley.” Without this system, he said, surgeons are “more likely to not get the entire lesion out or to damage healthy tissue or to have a large incision with more tissue disection, because you didn't  know exactly where the tumor was.”

Condell will be the first hospital in Lake County to get this equipment. It has been used at larger hospitals for the past decade, according to Dr. Jerry Bauer, chairman of the neurosurgery department at Lutheran General.

“Hospitals in Lake County are not at the forefront of neurosurgical advances, by any means,” Bauer said. “For Condell to get something like this is really special.'

Generally, other Lake hospital do not handle the most complex neurosurgical cases.

“We have eight neurosurgeons on staff to offer specific procedures, but for the most complex ones that require highly specialized recovery care, we send the patients to Evanston (Hospital)”, said Anne O'Connell, spokeswoman for Lake Forest Hospital.

O'Connell said her hospital  lacks the volume to justify the cost of the equipment and additional staff necessary to perform complex neurosurgery.

But Dr. Leonard Cerullo, neurosurgeon at Rush-Presbyterian- St. Luke's Medical Center in Chicago and a founding member of the Chicago Institute for Neurosurgery and Neuroresearch, said being close to home helps in a patient's recovery.

“One of the things critical to a good recovery is to have a support system in place,” said Cerullo.

That is why the Chicago Institute for Neurosurgery and Neuroresearch established satellite centers in Rockford. Elmhurst and three Chicago  sites, Cerullo said. None is in Lake County.

Rizner said that having the complex care close to home eased his recovery. After surgery, Citow used specialized techniques, such as an angiogram and magnetic resonance imaging, to verify that all the abnormal blood vessels and the entire clot were removed. That would not have been possible in Condell before its neurosurgery services were expanded.