On 15 May 2020, the Department of Neurosurgery at the University of Pretoria hosted a Webinar focusing on Intra-operative Ultrasound (IOUS) in Neurosurgery. The Department initiated the online teaching platform with the goal of optimising the safety of brain tumor surgery for children and adults who have to deal with this life-threatening condition.

One-hundred attendees from seventeen different countries namely Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Germany, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Malaysia, Namibia, Norway, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, Turkey, United Kingdom & United States of America joined the webinar to learn more about IOUS and Brain Tumor Surgery from the experts. The registered delegates had various areas of speciality and disciplines such as Clinical Neurophysiologists, Clinical Psychologist with interest in Neuropsychology, Clinical Specialists, Clinical Technologist in Neurophysiology, Consultants, Neurosurgeons, Medical Doctors, Fellows in Paediatric Neurosurgery, Heads of Departments, Academics in Neurosurgery, Registrars, Ultrasound application specialist & Sales Managers of medical device companies.

The webinar featured several leading international surgeons to teach neurosurgeons at all levels of their career. The webinar also unpacked how the skilled use of certain adjunctive techniques, in this case, intra-operative ultrasound, can assist in achieving the goal of making this surgery as safe as possible. Geirmund Unsgard (Norway); Aliasgar Moiyadi (India); Tormod Selbekk (Norway); Francesco Prada (Italy); Martin Schuhmann (Germany); Gavin Quigley (Ireland) and Llewellyn Padayachy (South Africa) all shared their expertise as the faculty for the webinar.

'We shared important lessons from some of the world's leading thinkers in the field of Neurosurgery aimed at improving surgical safety and outcomes from brain tumour surgery' said Prof Llewellyn Padayachy, Professor and Head of the Department of Neurosurgery at the University of Pretoria.

The Department will certainly host more webinars in the near future.