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HIGH LEVE
OPERAT
Philanthropic giving puts high-powered microscopes
in the steady hands of brain surgeons
by HILARY ANAKA
he phrase ‘it’s not brain surgery’ can be
thrown around at many workplaces. But
for Dr. Cian O’Kelly, brain surgery is all in
a day’s work at the University of Alberta
Hospital. As a neurosurgeon, he’s working deep in
the brains of patients with aneurysms, tumours and
blocked or malformed blood vessels every day.
And when Dr. O’Kelly is in the operating room, it’s
usually because that’s the last option. Other potential
treatments have been explored and exhausted, and
now he has to get inside the patient’s brain to save
their life.
“The main challenge in brain surgery is that we
have to be able to clearly see what we’re doing. We
want to take the least traumatic path to whatever part
of the brain we need to get to, so that often means
we’re working down very narrow corridors and
need the light and visualization from microscopes,”
describes Dr. O’Kelly. >