===== 🎭 Decorative Neurosurgery =====

**Decorative neurosurgery** refers to:

> A style of neurosurgical practice or publication that **prioritizes visual sophistication, technical complexity, or aesthetic appeal** over **clinical necessity, patient outcomes, or evidence-based justification**.

==== 🧠 Characteristics ====
  * Use of **high-tech tools** (e.g., exoscopes, 3D navigation, tubular retractors) without improving outcomes
  * Focus on **surgical choreography** over therapeutic value
  * Emphasis on **"how" it’s done** rather than **"why" it should be done**
  * Extrapolation of techniques from one pathology to another without justification (e.g., applying glioma strategies to metastases)

> **“Supramarginal resection of a well-circumscribed brain metastasis in an eloquent area is not oncological rigor — it’s decorative neurosurgery.”**

==== ⚠️ Red Flags ====
  * Lack of outcome data (survival, function, recurrence)
  * Absence of discussion on alternative therapies (e.g. radiosurgery)
  * Focus on intraoperative images, toolkits, and "novel" corridors
  * No acknowledgment of risks, costs, or patient selection criteria

==== 🔍 Related Concepts ====
  * [[clinical elegance]]
  * [[academic theater]]
  * [[marketing pamphlet]]


**Synonyms:** surgical vanity, aesthetic neurosurgery, technological maximalism

**Opposite:** Purposeful, evidence-based, outcome-driven surgery.