Neurosurgery (or neurological surgery) is the medical specialty concerned with the prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and rehabilitation of disorders which affect any portion of the nervous system including the brain, spinal cord, peripheral nerves, and extra-cranial cerebrovascular system.
Mahmut Gazi Ya?argil is a Turkish medical scientist and neurosurgeon,who collaborated with Raymond M. P. Donaghy M.D at the University of Vermont in developing microneurosurgery. Ya?argil treated epilepsy and brain tumors with instruments of his own design. From 1953 until his retirement in 1993 he was first resident, chief resident and then professor and chairman of the Department of Neurosurgery, University of Zurich and the Zurich University Hospital. In 1999 he was honored as "Neurosurgery’s Man of the Century 1950-1999" at the Congress of Neurological Surgeons Annual Meeting.
Yasargil published his surgical experiences in 330 papers and 13 monographs. The six-volume publication Microneurosurgery (1984–1996, Georg Thieme Verlag Stuttgart-New York) is the comprehensive review of his broad experiences and a major contribution to the neurosurgery literature.
