Clinician Education Initiative
One of the many exciting projects launched this year by the Spinal CSF Leak Foundation is our new Clinician Education Initiative. We invited applicants to “dream big” and help increase the number of clinicians who are trained to recognize, diagnose, and successfully treat spinal CSF leak across the globe. We’re thrilled to announce this year’s grantees.
About the grantees
Dr. Sharath Kumar GG is an interventional neuroradiologist at Apollo Hospital in Bangalore, India, who has been in practice since 2011. As one of the only physicians diagnosing and treating spinal CSF leaks in his country, he hopes to learn from other specialists and bring that knowledge back to his community to train other physicians and help spinal CSF leak patients. As a CEI grantee, he recently attended the Bridging the Gap conference in Denver, Colorado, and spent a week with Dr. Andrew Callen and his team observing University of Colorado Anschutz’s CSF leak clinic. We’ll be sharing an update about his experience soon!
Dr. Fernando Kowacs is a neurologist in Porto Alegre, Brazil, who leads the headache center at Hospital Moinhos de Vento and hopes to establish a spinal CSF leak program, educate other physicians, perform research, and raise awareness about spontaneous spinal CSF leaks, which are not as well understood in his country. As a CEI grantee, Dr. Kowacs plans to spend two weeks observing at Cedars-Sinai under the guidance of Dr. Wouter Schievink.
Dr. Reydmar Lopez-Gonzalez is a neurologist at Hospital San Vicente Fundacion in Medellin, Colombia. His dream is to expand awareness of spinal CSF leak throughout Colombia and Latin America, establish a specialized spinal CSF leak center, and educate neurologists, radiologists, and anesthesiologists. As a CEI grantee, Dr. Lopez-Gonzalez will travel to Duke University to observe and learn from Dr. Peter Kranz.
Dr. Gayle Salama, neuroradiologist, is co-director of Weill Cornell Medicine’s CSF Leak program and the director of spine imaging and interventions. Dr. Salama recognizes the need for awareness and education around spinal CSF leak for any and all providers who may be the first point of contact for spinal CSF leak patients. To that end, our CEI grant will support a spinal CSF leak awareness day hosted by Weill Cornell. This CME activity will have a cross-department focus, educating medical professionals across many specialties, so that spinal CSF leak can be recognized in more patients, with more efficient diagnosis and treatment.
A global endeavor
It is our privilege to foster this kind of global awareness and education, which not only amplifies and elevates care within clinicians’ respective countries as they educate others, but also drives exploration into innovative ways of diagnosing and treating spinal CSF leaks from fresh perspectives. Congratulations to all our grantees!
Further information:
Our page on the Clinician Education Initiative
To donate to fund educational efforts such as this, please visit spinalcsfleak.org/donate