Pittsburgh, April 7, 2021 -- Roberto C. Heros, MD, professor of neurosurgery at the University of Miami and senior vice-president and chief medical administrative officer of Jackson North Medical Center in North Miami Beach, presented a talk on "Intracranial Dural AV Fistulas" as the special guest speaker for the 2021 Peter J. Jannetta Lecture, held April 7 at the University of Pittsburgh. The lecture was held virtually with very limited in-person attendees due to COVID considerations.
A world-renown expert in cerebrovascular neurosurgery, Dr. Heros has received numerous awards for his work including the American Association of Neurological Surgeons' Cushing Medal, the highest award given to a neurosurgeon by the AANS. He has authored or co-authored four textbooks, over 200-refereed articles and 50 textbook chapters on cerebral aneurysms, arteriovenous malformations, experimental cerebral ischemia and skull base surgical approaches.
Born in Havana, Cuba in 1942, Dr. Heros left the country in 1960 for exile in the United States. He soon trained as a paratrooper for the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961, but was captured and served as a POW for two years before being released in an exchanged program. He returned to the U.S., attending medical school at the University of Tennessee where in graduated first in his class in 1968. He completed his residency at Massachusetts General Hospital where he would later become director of cerebrovascular surgery in 1980. He would eventually move to the University of Miami in 1995 where he would found the University of Miami International Health Center.
Dr. Heros has been chairman of the leading medical journal Neurosurgery and serves on editorial boards of several other journals. He also has served as vice president of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons and as president of American Association of Neurological Surgeons, the American Academy of Neurological Surgeons and the World Congress of the World Federation of Neurosurgical Societies. In addition to the Cushing Award, Dr. Heros has also received the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education’s Parker J. Palmer “Courage to Teach” award in 2007 and the COR Vitae Award of the American Heart Association for Stroke Care in 2010.
The Peter J. Jannetta Lecture is held annually in honor of the innovative former chairman of the University of Pittsburgh Department of Neurological Surgery who passed away in 2016. Dr. Jannetta served as chairman of the University of Pittsburgh Department of Neurological Surgery for 25 years beginning in 1971. He was internationally acclaimed for his development of microvascular decompression (MVD), an innovative procedure that moved blood vessels away from the trigeminal nerve, alleviating chronic pain and spasms in facial muscles. The procedure became commonly known as the ‘Jannetta Procedure’ and brought relief to thousands.