Recent advances in neurology

Wieslaw Oczkowski, MD, is a professor emeritus in the Department of Medicine at McMaster University and director of the Regional Stroke Network for the Central South Ontario Region.

If you were to name the 3 most important recent advances in neurology that are relevant for everyday practice, what would they be?

There have been many advances in neurology. The last decade was the decade of the brain, and I think it’s going to be the decades of the brain in the future.

The biggest advances in neurology are probably, one, clinical trials or randomized trials to test new therapeutics throughout all subspecialties of neurology.

The second would be advanced vascular imaging: magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), beyond MRI, and neurovascular imaging, where intravascular catheters are introduced into the brain and treatments are done that way.

The third would be actually subspecialization in neurology, where it’s very important to be an epilepsy expert, a multiple sclerosis expert, a stroke expert. But that, combined with our community partners working together for what many disorders in neurology are, is chronic disease management.