Craniotomy

A craniotomy is a neurosurgical procedure in which a section of bone, called a bone flap, is temporarily removed from the skull to give surgeons access to the brain beneath, and is then replaced and secured once the underlying surgery is complete; a craniectomy, by contrast, leaves the bone removed. The procedure is used to treat brain tumors, aneurysms, hematomas caused by traumatic injury, epilepsy and other conditions requiring direct access to brain tissue. Modern neurosurgical technique developed through the work of surgeons including Victor Horsley in Britain and Harvey Cushing in the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, who established the careful, image-guided and increasingly precise approach that distinguishes a planned craniotomy from the older, cruder practice of trepanation.