The Cardinal Santos Medical Center (CSMC) Brain and Spine Institute recently organized a series of educational webinars entitled “A Legacy of Innovation, Education and Service”. The webinars covered numerous topics on the innovations in brain and spine disease treatment and care, and how doctors can best put them into practice. The event was held from May 24-27 via Zoom.
Cardinal Santos Medical Center and the Brain and Spine Institute capped the week of remembrance by officially renaming the auditorium at the Philippine Center for Advanced Surgery after the late Dr. Eduardo R. Mercado.
CSMC invited 12 expert doctors and medical professionals to share their expertise at the 4-day webinar event. Among them were Prof. Bengt Karlsson of the Singapore Gamma Knife Center, who spoke on radiosurgery of arterio-venous malformations, Prof. Hubert Fernandez of the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, USA, who discussed the advancements in the treatment of Parkinson’s disease, and Dr. Wattana Mahattanakul, Neurosurgeon from Bumrungrad Spine Institute in Bangkok, Thailand, who talked about minimally invasive surgery in spine metastasis.
Other notable speakers covered pressing and demanding topics such as the intrauterine repair of myelomengingocole, presurgical options and evaluation in drug-resistant epilepsy, the surgical treatment of intractable epilepsy, early maximal safe resection for low-grade gliomas, fluorescein-guided tumor resection and intraoperative video angiography, molecular profiling, the role of Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) in brain and spine cancer treatment, and the role of multidisciplinary team approach and molecular tumor boards in central nervous system (CNS) cancer treatment.
The late Dr. Eduardo R. Mercado was the pioneer and former chairman of the Cardinal Santos Medical Center Brain and Spine Institute. He served twice as the Chief Medical Officer of CSMC and was the founder of the Philippine Gamma Knife Center and the hospital’s corporate social responsibility arm, Cardinal Medical Charities Foundation.
This week-long series of webinars was set up, not just to share the latest advancements in neurological disease treatment and care to the attendees of the said event, but also to commemorate CSMC Brain and Spine Institute’s former chairman and pioneer, the late Dr. Eduardo R. Mercado, whose contributions to the field of neurological disease treatment set an example for younger generations of neurology practitioners to follow. He served at CSMC as the Chief Medical Officer in 1993-1995 and 2011-2012, and established the hospital’s corporate social responsibility arm, Cardinal Medical Charities Foundation in 2011.
The unveiling ceremony was led by CSMC President and CEO Mr. Raul Pagdanganan, CSMC SVP and Chief Medical Officer Dr. Zenaida Javier-Uy, and the Brain and Spine Institute Chairman Dr. Michael Louis Gimenez.
In the culmination of the week-long event, CSMC and the Brain and Spine Institute officially renamed the auditorium at the Philippine Center for Advanced Surgery as Dr. Eduardo R. Mercado Auditorium in honor and recognition of his invaluable contributions to the hospital and the field of neurosurgery.
For more information about the CSMC Brain and Spine Institute and other services that CSMC offers, please visit https://cardinalsantos.com.ph/. CSMC is also on Facebook, like and follow them at www.facebook.com/CardinalSantos.
