Dr. Nirav Patel is an Attending Surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Assistant Professor of Neurosurgery at Harvard Medical School. He has completed his Neurosurgical Residency at the University of Wisconsin, followed by and Open Cerebrovascular and Skull Base Surgery Fellowship at Macquarie University in Australia, as well and an Endovascular Neurosurgery Fellowship at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
Dr. Patel is an expert in Brain Arteriovenous Malformation (AVM) and Moya Moya disease. He also treats complex cranial pathology, aneurysm, stroke, brain bypass, carotid disease, brain tumors, and skull base tumors. Dr. Patel believes it is paramount to know results exactly. He keeps a strict database that he enters each day to ensure patient outcomes are going in the right direction, allowing him to change treatments and know their outcomes. He enjoys the relationships this type of intimate surgery builds and tries to keep them as “friends of life.”
Dr. Patel has been able to share his expertise across the region, being asked to collaborate on difficult cases at Beth Israel Deaconess, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, UMass Medical Center, South Shore Hospital, and UConn Health. He has also seen and treated many patients who initially requested an appointment in order to get a second opinion on a diagnosis.
The Brigham is enrolled in several clinical trials for new techniques, and endovascular equipment, including infrared intraoperative measures of cerebral perfusion, detachable catheter tips, and novel stents and coils. Our team continues to publish results and dig deeper for answers to improve patient care across endovascular, open vascular and tumor disease.
Beyond his love for treating patients by surgery, Dr. Patel committed to helping students, resident and fellows acquire the judgment and skills to continue this work – as others have done for me. To this end, he built a 3D skills lab where he could teach residents and fellows the microsurgical skills needed to safely work with brain blood vessels for bypass and repair. At Brigham, he is directing an animal lab that will join the skull base lab as a resource for our residents to become excellent microsurgeons – before operating on patients in the OR. These labs are even more important in today’s environment where centers of excellence like Brigham are the few remaining places for residents and fellows are able to acquire skills needed for open cerebrovascular surgery. Dr. Patel has been working with colleagues to create courses, deliver lectures and hands on labs for residents across the country.
Lastly, continuing the research tradition of great cerebrovascular surgeons, he wishes to better understand cerebral physiology and neuronal regeneration. To that end, he has studied AVM physiology in surgical rat model. In this model he is also working to find molecular targets in the AVM that can be exploited to sensitize the AVM for radiosurgery. On another front, Dr. Patel is currently looking to publish our work on transgenerational effects of folate on neuronal regeneration, possibly opening mechanisms and targets for pathology across generations.
Read full stories from Dr. Patel's patients here
For second opinions please email BrainAVM@bwh.harvard.edu
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