Team working to improve outcome in vestibular schwannoma surgery

The concept of the 'learning curve' in the early years of consultant appointment is no longer acceptable and yet, for most complex operations, learning is a career-long process. Sub-specialization offers part of the solution to this problem by concentrating expertise, but there remains the question of how to introduce new team members without adversely affecting patient outcome. Shortened training and an increasingly aware public, who are more questioning of the experience and outcomes of those treating them, has required the surgical profession to move away from individual consultant practice and embrace team-working. When, in 1997, a second neurosurgeon joined the skull base team at Addenbrooke's Hospital, his introduction to acoustic neuroma surgery was mentored and operative cases were carefully selected at first. In this article, we discuss our experience with consultant mentoring, and compare the results of the first 100 translabyrinthine acoustic neuroma operations performed under this system with the first cohort of a similar number of patients published from Cambridge in 1989.