Neurosurgeon Dr Bertalanffy Hanover

Prof. Dr Helmut Bertalanffy MD is a specialist for neurosurgery and the director of Vascular Neurosurgery at the International Neuroscience Institute in Hanover.

The International Neuroscience Institute (INI) is a private clinic specialising in the diagnosis and treatment of diseases of the brain, spinal cord, and nerves. The neurosurgical specialists work according to the highest internationally recognised scientific standards. In international comparison, the INI is characterised by a low complication rate and above-average treatment success.

Dr Bertalanffy is a renowned national and international specialist in his field. Since joining the INI Hanover, Dr Bertalanffy has received assignments from 40 various countries from all over Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa as well as Japan, China, Korea, New Zealand, South Africa, and Chile. His many years of experience with complex disorders of the brain and spinal cord, his good results with even the most complicated cases, and the high medical standards at the INI Hanover are three crucial aspects that guide his international patient clientèle.

Dr Bertalanffy has mastered the treatment of many different neurosurgical diseases – both in adults and in children. The following neurosurgical procedures are routinely performed by Dr Bertalanffy at the INI in Hanover:

• Removal of meningiomas of the skull base (fronto-basal, sphenoid, clinoidal, cavernous sinus, petrous bone, tentorial, petroclival, foramen magnum), removal of acoustic neuromas, clivus chordomas, chondrosarcomas, pituitary adenomas and epidermoid cysts – partially endoscopically assisted, and in some cases in cooperation with an ENT specialist.
• Removal of intra-axial lesions of the brainstem (cavernous malformations, gliomas, ependymomas, and hemangioblastomas).
• Clipping of cerebral arterial aneurysms, resection of arteriovenous malformations, and microsurgical treatment of arteriovenous fistulae of the brain and spinal cord
• Revascularisation using extra-intracranial bypass.
• Removal of tumours of the lateral ventricle, the third ventricle (craniopharyngiomas, hypothalamic gliomas, cavernous malformations, colloid cysts), resection of tumours of the pineal region, and removal of tumours of the fourth ventricle (sometimes endoscopically assisted procedures).
• Removal of deep-seated gliomas (insula, thalamus, basal ganglia, hippocampus) – in many cases with intra-operative MRI control, neuronavigation, and 5-ALA fluorescence.
• Microsurgical treatment of trigeminal neuralgia and facial spasm.
• Nerve anastomosis (facial-hypoglossal anastomosis).
• Removing extra- and intramedullary spinal cord tumours (meningioma, neurinoma, ependymoma, glioma, cavernoma, hemangioblastoma, epidermoid cyst, and lipoma).
• Treatment of degenerative diseases of the cervical spine (anterior fusion, vertebrectomy, laminectomy, and laminoplasty).

Successful treatment requires a correct indication for operation i.e. it is carefully weighed whether it makes sense to treat a patient's illness surgically. Dr Bertalanffy refuses to operate on patients if he believes neurosurgical intervention is unlikely to sufficiently improve the course of disease. In the case of surgical indication, correct planning is required. Especially in the case of skull base and deep-seated brain lesions, including those located in the brainstem, it is important to select the best access route and expose the lesion (e.g. tumour, vascular malformation, or other lesion) in a fashion that allows for microsurgical manipulation in the depths of the brain without damaging the surrounding healthy brain tissue. Because each patient has individual anatomical conditions (which are examined to the last detail before the procedure), each operation is also a tailored intervention, which often deviates from general standards. This individual planning and particularly the correct implementation in the same high quality of microsurgical procedure even after many hours are among the trademarks of Dr Bertalanffy.

The website of Dr Bertalanffy can be found here.