Excellence and Expertise

The University of Virginia Health System's Department of Neurosurgery combines innovative technology, world-renowned physicians and a team-based approach to diagnosis and treatment of disorders affecting the nervous system.  The department consists of many subspecialty Centers of Excellence, covering the full range of neurological disorders.
Visit our Centers of Excellence

Referrals and Collaboration

Our doctor teams will review every case presented to us. Our experienced and dedicated nursing and administrative staff is always available to provide around-the-clock care, support and information for patients, families and referring clinicians. We welcome referrals from all geographic areas - one phone call is all it takes.

Contact Information

Click here for our physician profiles and contact information.

If you are unsure of who to contact, please call our general number (434) 924-2203 (Charlottesville) or 1-800-362-2203 (Toll free for outside Central Virginia) and our staff will help you.

News

First-in-class Surgical Training Lab Opens

UVA Health System, donors, and the departments of Neurosurgery and Otolaryngology have partnered to open a $2M+ state-of-the-art Microsurgical Anatomy Laboratory and Training Facility. This facility provides the means to educate medical students, residents, fellows, faculty and visiting health professionals on microsurgical anatomy, to encourage safe and precise surgical practice, and ultimately to improve the care of patients undergoing head, neck and spine procedures.  In addition to everyday training of our residents and health professionals, it will also host national and international courses and symposia focusing on microsurgical anatomy, and stimulate research and innovation to develop new surgical approaches and techniques.

First-of-its-kind Focused Ultrasound Treatment

UVA neurosurgeon Dr. Jeff Elias was featured on ABC News for pioneering the use of focused ultrasound to treat patients with Essential Tremor.  Click here to see the clip from the January 23rd show.    Dr. Elias first used focused ultrasound, which Time Magazine recently called one of the world's 50 most exciting technologies, in February 2011 to treat a patient with Essential Tremor, and the patient responded favorably.  It's believed to be the first intracranial therapeutic application of the technology in the world.  Click here to read more about the first patient.  The procedure was done in UVA's $8M Focused Ultrasound Center, the first such facility in the world.  UVA neurosurgeons  Neal Kassell,  Elias and Jason Sheehan, along with top radiation oncologists, radiologists and other specialists, are leading the development of focused ultrasound technology, which has exciting potential for drug delivery and to treat tumors, stroke, and movement disorders non-invasively.   Read about UVA's initiative here and learn more about the exciting technology at www.fusfoundation.org/.  To contact our focused ultrasound group, please call 434-243-1435 or email FUSbrain@virginia.edu.

Intraoperative MRI suite open

UVA has opened a new operating room suite equiped with intraoperative MRI and biplane angiography (which captures X-rays of arteries and blood flow), only the second such installation in the country. The biplane angiography allows for extremely targeted, image-guided treatment and the MRI allows our surgeons to verify that all parts of difficult tumors have been removed before surgery completion.  Dr. Mark Shaffrey performed the first procedure in the suite and many of our neurosurgeons have followed.  Read more at: http://uvahealth.com/services/neuro-oncology/imris-therapy-suite-for-brain-tumor-surgery.

Best Doctors in America

Our neurosurgeons Jeff Elias, John Jane Sr., John Jane Jr., Neal Kassell, Ed Oldfield, Chris Shaffrey, Mark Shaffrey, Jason Sheehan and Justin Smith have been named to Best Doctors in America by Best Doctors, Inc. They were chosen through a comprehensive peer-review survey that asks: "If you or a loved one needed a doctor in your specialty, to whom would you refer them?" The database represents the top 3 percent of physicians in more than 400 medical subspecialties.

NIH-UVA Neurosurgical Residency Program

The new joint NIH-UVA Neurosurgical Residency Program is underway with its first three residents now on the UVA clinical service. The program has the goal of training and educating future academic neurosurgical leaders with the ability to perform world-class neuroscience research.