This book summarizes the knowledge and experience of a constellation of physicians working in the field of third ventricle treatment for 35 years.
"There is hardly any other branch of neurosurgery on which so dark and at the same time so brilliant pages have been written as those devoted to surgery of the third ventricle. Pages filled with challenge, bitterness, ambition and hope. There is hardly any other field of neurosurgery in which modern medical advances have led to such a positive breakthrough as in third ventricle surgery.
After 2005, when I defended my thesis for Doctor of Medical Sciences "Microsurgery of the third ventricle", I had decided to share my experience in a separate monograph dedicated to this topic. The extremely large and rapid progress in the field of this difficult and challenging section of neurosurgery, the desire to develop it in the light of modern achievements in our country, as well as to improve the results of the treatment of patients with this severe intraventricular pathology, was a reason to invite other colleagues who are currently working in this field. This undoubtedly enriched the practical focus of the book, and I want to express my gratitude to all colleagues who responded to my request and participated in the construction of this work. All this required a major revision with the inclusion of new author information, to select the older sources, to add new cases observed and operated by us. Some of the CT images from our earliest period are of poor quality, but they are of some clinical interest, which is why we have included them. The various sections of the book, especially those of the anatomical part and the presentation of the original operative approaches in the "history of surgery", could have been more richly illustrated, but this was connected with a number of legal and financial problems in view of the possibility of their publication by us .
We were not alone in this long and difficult journey. We express our gratitude and appreciation to the people with whom we worked: the neurosurgeon colleagues, the operating, anesthesia and resuscitation teams, neuroradiologists, neuromorphologists, radio- and chemotherapists, and all those without whose support and help this work would not have been created. And one more thing... because behind every human life saved are your and our common efforts and dedication. A dedication that a great writer and humanist - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry summed up in what he wrote: "The greatness of my civilization is that a hundred miners risk their lives to save just one buried miner. They save a person." That's how we worked when we saved every single human life."
