Unlike most other surgical specialties, it currently has its own independent training pathway which takes around eight years (ST1-8); before being able to sit for consultant exams with sufficient amounts of experience and practice behind them.

[10][11] Simple forms of neurosurgery were performed on King Henri II in 1559, after a jousting accident with Gabriel Montgomery fatally wounded him.

Ambroise Paré and Andreas Vesalius, both experts in their field at the time, attempted their own methods, to no avail, in curing Henri.

[12] In China, Hua Tuo created the first general anaesthesia called mafeisan, which he used on surgical procedures on the brain.

[16] Lobotomy: also known as leucotomy, was a form of psychosurgery, a neurosurgical treatment of mental disorders that involves severing connections in the brain's prefrontal cortex.

[17] The originator of the procedure, Portuguese neurologist António Egas Moniz, shared the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine of 1949.

In 1950 Jose Delgado invented the first electrode that was implanted in an animal's brain (bull), using it to make it run and change direction.

[25] Other tools, such as hand held power saws and robots have only recently been commonly used inside of a neurological operating room.

To practice advanced specialization within neurosurgery, additional higher fellowship training of one to two years is expected from the neurosurgeon.

Some of these divisions of neurosurgery are: According to an analysis by the American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (NSQIP), the most common surgeries performed by neurosurgeons in between 2006 and 2014 were the following:[31] Neuropathology is a specialty within the study of pathology focused on the disease of the brain, spinal cord, and neural tissue.

[34][35] While pathology has been studied for millennia only within the last few hundred years has medicine focused on a tissue- and organ-based approach to tissue disease.

This procedure is used when the tumor does not have clear boundaries and the surgeon wants to know if they are invading on critical regions of the brain which involve functions like talking, cognition, vision, and hearing.

In 60 CE, Dioscorides, a physician, pharmacologist, and botanist, detailed how mandrake, henbane, opium, and alcohol were used to put patients to sleep during trepanning.

The combination of carbon dioxide, hydrogen, and nitrogen, was a form of neuroanesthesia adopted in the 18th century and introduced by Humphry Davy.

Methods that utilize small craniotomies in conjunction with high-clarity microscopic visualization of neural tissue offer excellent results.

Similar to a car or mobile Global Positioning System (GPS), image-guided surgery systems, like Curve Image Guided Surgery and StealthStation, use cameras or electromagnetic fields to capture and relay the patient's anatomy and the surgeon's precise movements in relation to the patient, to computer monitors in the operating room.

These sophisticated computerized systems are used before and during surgery to help orient the surgeon with three-dimensional images of the patient's anatomy including the tumor.

Techniques such as endoscopic endonasal surgery are used in pituitary tumors, craniopharyngiomas, chordomas, and the repair of cerebrospinal fluid leaks.

[citation needed] Repair of craniofacial disorders and disturbance of cerebrospinal fluid circulation is done by neurosurgeons who also occasionally team up with maxillofacial and plastic surgeons.

In cervical cord compression, patients may have difficulty with gait, balance issues, and/or numbness and tingling in the hands or feet.

Laminectomy is the removal of the lamina of the vertebrae of the spine in order to make room for the compressed nerve tissue.

Numerous other types of nerve entrapment conditions and other problems with the peripheral nervous system are treated as well.

[50] Severe acute pain following brain surgery may also increase the risk of a person developing a chronic post-craniotomy headache.

[50] Neurosurgery is a part of practical medicine and the only specialty that involves invasive intervention in the activity of the living brain.

Therefore, neurosurgery faces a wide range of bioethical issues and a significant selection of the latest treatment technologies.