Neurosurgeon Eric Jackson shares a recap of a moderated session focused on the upcoming CNS guidelines for the operative and nonoperative management of patients with Chiari malformation. Despite a significant amount of literature on the topic, there is a lack of evidence to answer most of the questions posed by the guidelines. Johns Hopkins hopes to be at the forefront of the needed additional research in this field.
Hello I'm eric Jackson an associate professor of neurosurgery here at johns Hopkins. I'm here to talk today about a recent session I moderated on the guidelines for chiari one malformation at the Congress of neurological surgeons meeting in san Francisco in october. The guidelines are put out by the Congress of neurological surgeons guideline committee which uses a standardized rigorous methodology to come up with these and make recommendations for the Chiari guidelines. There were a total of three chapters with 13 different questions posed within them. Overall at the session we discussed all of these three chapters as well as future directions for them due to the breadth of the guidelines. I do not feel I can cover them all in a brief summary but I believe the take home from both the session and the guidelines is that although there is a significant literature on chiari one malformation, there is not literature to make strong recommendations based on the fact that the majority of evidence was level three. There are some higher level of evidence papers that have been released since the guidelines and more that are in production but the speakers all highlighted the need for better evidence as we move forward for treating patients with chiari one malformation here at johns Hopkins, we're happy to have participated in some of the research currently being published through our participation in the park Reeves consortium. At the same time we look forward to helping to better answer these questions. Moving forward through our chiari clinical research center which has been supported by a generous donor recently trying to collect as much data as we possibly can on all patients seen here with chiari, one malformation. Our goal is to help better answer these questions through our participation and multi institutional consortium as well as our own projects. We look forward to answer these questions moving forward.