Home Blog On COVID-19, Brain Surgery, and Never Wasting a Crisis | Dr. Daniel Kelly

September 15, 2021

On COVID-19, Brain Surgery, and Never Wasting a Crisis | Dr. Daniel Kelly

by Anthony Effinger

The Think Neuro podcast from Pacific Neuroscience Institute takes you into the clinic, operating room and laboratory with doctors and surgeons who are tackling the most challenging brain diseases and disorders. Host: Anthony Effinger

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Episode 20: Show Notes

When Dr. Daniel Kelly and his three colleagues founded the Pacific Neuroscience Institute in 2015, they knew it would be much more than a medical practice. It would be an institute in the true sense of the word, with a mission to heal patients, do research, and educate new doctors. Dr. Kelly and his team didn’t let up on that three-pronged mission during the pandemic. To the contrary, they doubled down, publishing 8 big papers in top-flight medical journals, all of them centered on the minimally-invasive brain surgery that PNI specializes in. One paper focused on complication avoidance analyzed the ten-year track record of PNI doctors using endoscopes to go through the nasal cavity and remove non-cancerous tumors called adenomas from the pituitary gland. It’s a tricky operation because the pituitary sits among very delicate structures, including the carotid artery and the optic nerve. Listen to this episode to learn more about these medical journals and brain surgery at PNI.

About Dr. Kelly

Dr. Daniel Kelly, a board-certified neurosurgeon, is the Director and one of the founders of the Pacific Neuroscience Institute, Director of the Pacific Brain Tumor Center and Pacific Pituitary Disorders Center, and a Professor of Neurosurgery at Saint John’s Cancer Institute at Providence Saint John’s Health Center. Dr. Kelly is internationally recognized in the field of minimally invasive keyhole surgery for brain, pituitary and skull base tumors. In practice for over 25 years, he has one of the world’s largest series in endonasal surgery with over 2,000 procedures performed including over 900 endoscopic endonasal surgeries, and almost 2,000 craniotomies for brain and skull base tumors.

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Anthony Effinger

Think Neuro's host is Anthony Effinger, an award-winning journalist who is fascinated with neuroscience and the workings of the brain. Anthony spent 24 years at Bloomberg News, where he covered all aspects of finance, with forays into science and health. In 2006, the Association of Health Care Journalists awarded him first prize for Playing the Odds, an in-depth piece on the changing strategies used to treat prostate cancer. These days, he is a staff writer at Willamette Week, a Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper in Portland, Oregon, where he lives with his wife and two children.

Last updated: September 29th, 2021