Dr. Theodore Schwartz, the David and Ursel Barnes Professor of Minimally Invasive Neurosurgery, was invited to deliver the 2019 Alfred Washington Adson Distinguished Lecture at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida, on September 16, 2019. Dr. Alfredo Quinones, Chair of Neurologic Surgery at Mayo Clinic Jacksonville, and Chair emeritus Dr. Robert Wharen joined him on stage for special remarks.
The lecture series honors Dr. Alfred Washington Adson, who helped found the neurological surgery section at Mayo Clinic. Dr. Adson also served as president of the Society of Neurological Surgeons (SNS) in 1932 and 1933. The lecture series named for him brings top-caliber neurosurgeons to Mayo each year to speak about their area of expertise in neurosurgery.
Dr. Schwartz’s presentation, Endoscopic Endonasal Approaches to the Anterior Skull Base: The Lifelong Learning Curve, focused on his long-term approach to improving endoscopic surgery. Dr. Schwartz specializes in the surgical treatment of brain tumors, pituitary tumors, and epilepsy using the latest techniques in computer-guided surgical navigation.
His expertise in minimally invasive endoscopy and microsurgery has made him one of the top doctors in New York City and the nation as well as a pioneer in the field of neurosurgery. He recently became the first surgeon at NewYork-Presbyterian Weill Cornell to use Gleolan for malignant brain tumors. In addition to that, he was the first surgeon to use the ROSA robot to place electrodes to treat epilepsy patients, the first surgeon to use MRI-guided laser therapy for brain tumors and epilepsy, and is world-renowned for being the first surgeon to remove a skull base tumor using a minimally invasive endoscopic approach through the patient's nostrils.
Dr. Schwartz is also the Director of Anterior Skull Base and Pituitary Surgery and the Director of the Epilepsy Research Laboratory at Weill Cornell Medicine. He has been consistently named to the lists of New York’s Super Doctors, Best Doctors in New York Magazine, America’s Top Surgeons, America’s Best Doctors, and America’s Best Doctors for Cancer. He has also co-authored two books on endoscopic pituitary surgery and endoscopic skull base surgery.
