Recovery Beyond the Operating Room

25 February 2024

09:00 AM – 02:00 PM

Lecture Hall 1, Northwest School of Medicine, Peshawar

Organized by: Northwest School of Medicine & WFNS

Supported by: Gisela Hagemann Foundation

The official conference report describes the workshop as a multidisciplinary programme exploring neurorehabilitation strategies, community health and interdisciplinary collaboration. Participants included neurosurgeons, physicians, physical therapists, rehabilitation personnel and community-health workers.

Surgery is only part of the journey

Access to safe surgery is essential, but the patient's journey does not necessarily end when an operation is completed or an acute neurological condition has been stabilized.

For individuals affected by spinal and neurological disorders, recovery may involve mobility, rehabilitation, long-term functional support and coordinated care across multiple professions.

The Spinal Neurorehabilitation Workshop created a dedicated environment in which these dimensions of care could be considered together.

Rather than approaching rehabilitation as something separate from neurosurgery, the programme positioned it within a wider continuum of neurological care linking intervention, recovery and reintegration.

A multidisciplinary approach to recovery

The workshop brought together speakers including Maximillian Mehdorn, Shahzad Shamim, Sabahat Asim Wasti, Florian Roser, Ellen Merete Hagen and Humberto A. Cerrel Bazo, while Syed Muhammad Ilyas contributed perspectives relating to community health.

The diversity of the faculty reflected the central idea behind the program: neurorehabilitation cannot be delivered effectively through one discipline alone.

Neurosurgeons may address the structural or operative problem. Physicians contribute to ongoing medical care. Physical therapists work with function, mobility and adaptation. Rehabilitation professionals help patients navigate longer-term recovery, while community-health perspectives connect clinical care with the environment to which patients ultimately return.

The workshop therefore demonstrated an important principle for global surgery:

the measure of successful surgical care should extend beyond access to an operation and consider what happens to patients afterward.

Acute care → Surgical/clinical intervention → Rehabilitation → Functional recovery → Community

From intervention to function

A global-surgery framework focused only on surgical volume risks overlooking an important question:

What happens after the patient leaves the operating theatre?

For neurological and spinal conditions, meaningful recovery may depend on access to rehabilitation services, continuity of care and coordination between professionals.

The workshop's emphasis on neurorehabilitation therefore expands the conversation from procedural access toward patient-centred recovery.

This is particularly relevant when surgical systems are being strengthened: increasing the capacity to perform procedures should ideally be accompanied by attention to the services patients need before, during and after those procedures.

Building collaboration across disciplines

One of the strongest features of this workshop was the range of professional backgrounds represented.

That diversity matters because spinal rehabilitation frequently requires coordination rather than isolated expertise.

The workshop therefore functioned not only as an educational event, but also as a meeting point between people whose roles intersect along the same patient pathway.

The official account describes the event as fostering interdisciplinary collaboration and advancing understanding of neurorehabilitation strategies.

What this means for global surgery

The workshop reflects a broader way of thinking about surgical systems.

Global surgery is not only about whether an operation can be performed. It is also about whether systems can support patients throughout the wider course of illness and recovery.

Integrating rehabilitation into the global-surgery conversation encourages more complete measures of success ones that look beyond procedural access toward function, independence and continuity of care.

Access to surgery matters. What happens after surgery matters too.