Dr. Zoukaa Sargi Voted President-elect of the North American Skull Base Society
The organization brings together medical specialists involved in the complex world of skull-base surgery.
Zoukaa Sargi, M.D., M.P.H., was voted president-elect at the February meeting of the North American Skull Base Society (NASBS). The professional organization brings together multiple medical specialists specializing in one of the human body’s most fascinating and challenging parts, the base of the skull.
A member of the Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery and the Division of Skull-base Surgery at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine since 2008, Dr. Sargi has served the NASBS for multiple years in elected positions on the society’s board of directors. After a year as president-elect, he will be voted president and serve on the board of advisors for several years.
Connecting Experts to Improve Patient Outcomes
The NASBS is unique in that it connects specialists from many different medical fields who work in the region of the head that was considered difficult to access without causing major morbidity to patients.
“Unlike a field or subspecialty society, where you go and everybody is, for example, an ENT or a head-and-neck-cancer surgeon, skull-base surgery is a team sport. You need providers from different fields in medicine and surgery working together,” said Dr. Sargi.
The skull base is the area that separates the brain and the nervous system above from everything below, including the eye, the nasal cavity, the ear, the throat and deeper neck structures. Unlike other areas of the body, like the thoracic or abdominal cavities, which have comparatively large spaces, the area at the base of the skull is tight and packed with critical structures.
“Skull-base surgery is very challenging because it is performed around extremely important nerves and vessels. You’re navigating in tight spaces, trying to preserve delicate, essential structures, with rare diseases that are located in very hard-to-access areas,” Dr. Sargi said. “These are oftentimes long, tedious and meticulous surgeries that can last many hours.”
Medical specialties tend to be defined by specific geographic locations in the body or by organ systems. But because the skull base has so many complex structures in such close proximity, cross-pollination among experts working in those areas is essential and ultimately helps patients.
“You have ENTs and eye surgeons who work in the extracranial space and neurosurgeons who work in the intracranial space. Working makes each specialist learn from other colleagues about their respective areas of expertise. Skull-base surgery is an example of collaborative surgery, where two or more experts meeting in that gray zone gives the patient the best outcome,” said Dr. Sargi.
Educating the Next Generation of Skull-base Surgeons
When it was formed in 1989, the NASBS was a bit of a “gentleman’s club,” where a select group of surgeons talked about their approaches to large and complicated skull-base tumors, said Dr. Sargi. Now, with more than 1,000 members from all over the world, the society has grown into an organization where experts educate, innovate and collaborate across specialties to improve outcomes of patients with skull-base disorders.
In addition to its annual meeting, scientific poster presentations, video sessions and debates, NASBS offers educational opportunities like live cadaver dissection courses. Offered twice per year, the live dissections are meant to help trainees from diverse fields learn surgical techniques for skull-base issues.
As part of his work as president-elect and president, Dr. Sargi aims to deepen the international ties within NASBS and between it and other skull-base societies from around the world.
Skull-base surgery is very challenging because it is performed around extremely important nerves and vessels. You’re navigating in tight spaces, trying to preserve delicate, essential structures, with rare diseases that are located in very hard-to-access areas.
—Dr. Zoukaa Sargi
While NASBS, which includes the United States, Canada and Mexico, is already an international organization, he hopes to engage more participation and collaboration from skull-base surgery leaders and non-surgeon specialists from around the world interested in the field.
With his multiple specialties in rhinology and head and neck cancer surgery, Dr. Sargi is a natural fit for representing the field of skull-base surgery.
“It’s not easy to go to a place and say, ‘I’m a skull-base surgeon,’ because those conditions are rare, and you need to have the capacity, the support and the infrastructure to be able to have this type of practice,” he said. “Having been at the University of Miami since 2008, I consider myself very lucky and privileged to be offered an environment where the institution, the patient population and the infrastructure allowed me to grow a very subspecialized practice that I would not have been able to have anywhere else in the country or in the world.”
Tags: Department of Otolaryngology, Dr. Zoukaa Sargi, head and neck cancers, otolaryngology, Skull-base surgery, team science