Written by Ma Yongjie, Li Chen   Neurosurgery_Xuanwu August 30, 2021

In order to improve the training quality of the Neurointerventional specialty, standardize the training systems and improve the abilities of clinicians in nerve intervention, the Department of Health Science, Technology and Education of the National Health Commission has selects training bases nationwide to serve the Neurointerventional discipline. Through a combination of remote, face-to-face, and based training ways, the Neurointerventional team’s professional competence will be strengthened. After two rounds of preliminary screening and defense selection, the Neurosurgery Department of Xuanwu Hospital of Capital Medical University has become one of the first 15 national Neurointerventional training bases.

The Neurosurgical Department of Xuanwu Hospital is the founding base of Chinese neurosurgery and the cradle of training neurosurgery talents. Professor Zhao Yicheng, a pioneer of neurosurgery in China, founded it in the early 1960s.  Under the guides of Professor WANG Zhongcheng, DING Yuji, LING Feng, and ZHANG Hongqi, it becomes a high influence neurosurgical center at home and abroad with modern equipment, excellent technology, and reasonable echelon formation. Now the Neurosurgical Department of Xuanwu Hospital is the national geriatric diseases research center, the National Center for neurological diseases, and the training base of the Department of Health Science, Technology and Education of the National Health Commission. It is also the world neurosurgery resident training demonstration center authorized by the world neurosurgery Alliance (WFNS), one of the first training bases for neurosurgery specialists approved by the National Health Commission, and a neurosurgery training base of aiding foreign countries.

The Department of Neurosurgery of Xuanwu Hospital is one of the earliest centers to carry out Neurointerventional diagnosis and treatments in China. Under the guide of Professor Ling Feng, Professor Zhang Hongqi and Professor Jiao Liqun, the center has developed steadily for decades, with a total of more than 2000 cases of interventional therapy and more than 3000 cases of angiographic diagnosis per year. Our center has 102 beds for Neurointerventional therapy and 16 doctors who can independently complete interventional surgery, 15 angiographic technicians, and 18 nurses. We also have 7 catheter rooms, 3 DSA compound operating rooms and 1 MRI compound operating room, equipped with 5 sets of double C-arm DSAs. We can treat a variety of nervous system related diseases, including stroke intra-arterial emergency recanalization, intracranial artery stenting, carotid artery stenting, cerebral aneurysm embolization, cerebral spinal cord vascular malformation embolization and so on. Our treatment level is leading in the world, especially in the interventional treatments of spinal vascular malformations and stent treatments of intracranial artery stenosis.

The Department has established a complete training system, including a one-year advanced Neurointerventional seminar, a half-year aneurysm and CEA special technical seminar, and a three-month observation class. The training contents include operations and interventional treatments technology of cerebrovascular diseases, microvascular anastomosis technology, etc. More than 70 students all over the country are accepted every year. Since 2011, a total number of 435 people have graduated successfully. The syllabus of our training program covers eight sections: special abilities training of general technology of nerve intervention, intracranial aneurysm intervention technology, intervention technology of acute ischemic stroke, intervention technology of cerebral spinal vascular malformation, intervention technology of symptomatic cerebral artery stenosis and occlusion, intervention technology of cerebral venous diseases, intervention technology of nerve tumor, and intervention technology in compound surgery. The course provides more than 100 class hours of the theoretical knowledge learning and three-month, six-month and twelve month clinical refresher training plans for different level’s students. According to the statistics data of 2019, the neurosurgery department of Xuanwu Hospital is the unit with the largest number of staff trained in nerve intervention field in China.