His work with Sir Godfrey Hounsfield to determine the spatial resolution of the CT scanner opened the door for its use in stereotactic surgery.

The same team reported the treatment of spinal cord AVMs by percutaneous embolization of an intercostal artery using stainless steel pellets.

Ommaya made several significant contributions to many areas that concern neurological surgeons, treatment of cancer, hydrocephalus, traumatic brain injury, and arterio-venous malformations.

[3] Ommaya won a national swimming competition in Pakistan in 1953 and also established himself as a champion debater and trained as an operatic singer.

[4] From 1961 to 1980, he joined the staff of the National Institute of Health and became Chief of Neurosurgery,[5] studying treatment of malignant neoplasms, the biomechanics and mechanisms of brain injury, and memory.

He held patents in devices for drug delivery to the brain, protective systems for neck and head injuries and an artificial organ for treatment of diabetes.

Ommaya completed his neurosurgical training under Dr. Joseph Pennybacker at Nuffield College of Surgical Sciences in London and at the Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford.

After his neurosurgical training, Ommaya came to America and began working as a researcher and clinician at the Surgical Neurology Branch of the NIH.

[9] Ommaya was well known for his surgical skill and in 1977 he completed a difficult removal of a spinal arteriovenous malformation (AVM) which received attention in the press.

The hypothermia was needed to slow metabolism and protect the brain and organs from reduced oxygen supply while Ommaya surgically embolized and removed an AVM which was located near the medulla.

Ommaya also appeared with Peter Ustinov, Nick Nolte and Susan Sarandon in the movie Lorenzo's Oil released in 1992.

The same team reported the treatment of spinal cord AVMs by percutaneous embolization of an intercostal artery using stainless steel pellets.

[17] Ommaya's friendship with Congressman Lehman, then chair of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, lead to the creation of the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control.

[18] Ommaya worked with Sir Godfrey Hounsfield to determine the spatial resolution of the CT scanner which opened the door for its use in stereotactic surgery.

Di Chiro, Ommaya and Doppman also reported one of the earliest interventional radiology approaches using stainless steel pellets to treat a spinal cord AVM.

While the Chief Medical Advisor for the Department of Transportation, Ommaya commissioned a report, Injury in America, from the Institute of Medicine (IOM) in 1985.

Lehman, then chair of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, was responsible for the initial $10 million awarded to the CDC to establish a new Center for Injury Control.

Ommaya, Illani Atwater, and colleagues identified that ventricular-peritoneal CSF shunts provided an immune protected site for the transplantation of mouse and rat islets in dogs and llamas.

Consciousness is the result of evolutionary forces directed to improving the efficiency of mental function where the limbic system plays a key role.

[34] On July 13, 2008, Pakistan's Dawn newspaper reported his death, and called him a "trailblazing Pakistani surgeon",[35] followed by West European and US publications.