Neurosurgery
Professor:
Juha Öhman
juha.ohman@pshp.fi
Adjunct Professors:
Pauli Helen
pauli.helen@pshp.fi
Antti Ronkainen
antti.ronkainen@pshp.fi
Clinical Teacher:
Tero Niskakangas
tero.niskakangas@uta.fi
Ongoing research projects:
Neurotraumatology
Neurotraumatology research focuses on traumatic brain damage and spinal cord injury.
In recent years, brain damage research has focused, in particular, on mild traumatic brain injury and the assessment of injury prognosis from a multidisciplinary perspective that combines acute medicine, biochemistry, imaging and psychology. A prospective study of mild brain injuries is currently underway, the Tampere Traumatic Head and Brain Injury Study, with follow-up visits to be concluded in autumn 2013. A part of the study focuses on prospective brain damage research material gathered between 2006 and 2009. Research cooperation is carried out both nationally and internationally. Our most active collaborators are Harvard University (Boston, MA, USA) and the University of British Columbia (Vancouver, BC, Canada).
Spinal cord injury research focuses on tetraparesis patients and the assessment of their ability to function and recovery using different methods, such as spinal cord diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) The research is based on a retrospective patient series gathered in 2011-2012, the Spinal Cord Injury Series of Tampere – Retroprospective Study, in which patients were comprehensively charted, based on urological, pulmonological, neurological, radiological ad psychological factors.
The neurotraumatological research group has produced two doctoral theses and three advanced courses in recent years. Six doctoral theses are currently in the making, two of which will be completed this year (2014).
More detailed information on the research community and academic presentations and publications can be found here.
Contact details: Teemu M. Luoto MD (teemu.luoto@pshp.fi)
Aneurysm research:
Aneurysm research consists of several different clinical research projects, the aim of which is to study the onset of aneurysm disease and the effectiveness of treatment. We are studying, for example, the connection between aneurysm and infections, the long-term prognosis of patients and the effectiveness of different treatments. The research group cooperates with, for example, aneurysm research groups of other university hospitals and dental and forensic medicine units.
Contact details: Liisa Pyysalo MD, PhD (liisa.pyysalo@pshp.fi)
DBS research:
The DBS (Deep brain stimulation) research group studies the clinical and neurobiological effects of deep brain stimulation in, for example, motor disorders, Parkinson’s disease, refractory epilepsy and certain mental disorders (OCD, depression).
Contact details: Juha Öhman, prof. (juha.ohman@pshp.fi)
GTT research:
Global Trigger Tool (GTT) is a manual and retrospective information gathering tool developed by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) in 2007 for finding so-called triggers, meaning factors that may lead to potential adverse events, in medical records. Adverse events are common in clinical patient work and cause unnecessary human suffering, as well as considerable financial losses. Several methods have been studied and used for improving patient security, and GTT has proved to be a promising method in the systematic screening of adverse events.
The neurosurgery and neonatology clinics of the Tampere University Hospital have, between 2007 and 2010, carried out project studies on the use of GTT in identifying adverse events that occur in clinical patient work. These project studies concluded that triggers found in medical records correlated with the occurrence of adverse events. The studies provided valuable information about treatment processes and concrete proposals for developing clinical work.
The project studies will now continue in the form of a study of the use and applications of GTT. The study will assess the applicability of GTT in the screening of Finnish language medical records, the first attempts to use the method with neurosurgical medical records, and compare automated and manual information gathering methods with the SAS® Text Miner application, which can be used to automatically screen electronic medical records for triggers. The aim is to identify triggers that predict potential adverse events in the patient materials used in the study and their health economic significance.
The hypothesis is that identifying predictive factors before the onset of adverse patient events and focusing treatment based on these factors would prevent the extra costs to the health care system resulting from potential adverse events.
Contact details: Juha Öhman, Prof. (juha.ohman@pshp.fi)
