As stated in the title of the post, how difficult is neurosurgery compare to a field like general surgery, plastics, ortho, etc. I know that mainstream culture has the perception that neurosurgery is a highly complex and intricate field. However, I'm curious if that is actually true? I've had the chance to observe gen surg, ENT, and neurosurg cases during med school. However, it's still difficult for me to gauge the relative "difficulty" of these fields as I'm not actually the one wielding the knife. I recently asked a plastics resident this same question and he stated that plastics is more difficult due to the broader anatomy that he works with. However, there's obviously an element of bias there.
Neurosurgery residents have the highest STEP scores (correlates with IQ), highest MCAT scores, most # of publications, highest grades, best letters of recs, best everything basically. Even at top schools like Harvard and John Hopkins and Yale, only 1 or 2 get to become neurosurgeons. So it does seem that the smartest people become neurosurgeons.
I’m biased, but I can’t imagine anything is harder than skull base/cerebrovascular microsurgery. The approaches can be complex and sometimes take hours. You’re working in a tight space under a microscope with little margin for error. If you get into arterial bleeding it can be catastrophic. Neurologic complications are also very morbid, sometimes devastating. Most other surgical subspecialties never use a microscope, some don’t even need loupes. Spine and general neurosurgery is probably similar in difficulty to other fields.
What's with all the lame posts like this recently?
You can make any subspecialty as complex as you want. Deformity spine, for example, can easily be made highly academic and tedious if one so chooses; it just happens that most don’t have the interest or patience to put in that kind of effort. A certain level of ostentatious-ness seems like the cost of entry into skull base and vascular on the other hand. I’m sure it runs the gamut in other surgical fields too. More importantly, chill it with the narcissism you psychos. The overinflated sense of self importance and fragile egos on this site is nauseating.
More technically difficult and higher stakes than most. Especially skull base and open CV. Not sure if it's technically harder than congenital heart surgery though. I remember seeing a few arterial switch and staged heart reconstructions (Norwood/Glenn/Fontan) that gave me the hebiee-jeebies. Probably why I ended up doing MIS spine.
why are premeds on this forum
