When Ochsner neurosurgeon Dr. Benjamin Brown was first setting up his practice some years ago, he considered back home to his native Covington. The problem was, neurosciences capabilities on the Northshore weren’t where he felt they needed to be for a practice to thrive.
That has changed. Thanks to the partnership between St. Tammany Health System and Ochsner help, he’s back, as a key part of the Ochsner Neurosciences Institute at St. Tammany Health System, a growing practice that gives local residents an opportunity to receive highly specialized care without having to leave the region.
Recently, Dr. Brown visited The Lake 94.7-FM to discuss the program and all it has to offer with host Charles Dowdy.
Listen in with the embedded audio player below, or scroll further down for a transcript of their conversation, lightly edited for length and readability.
Charles: It is a Thursday, and our friends from St. Tammany Health System are coming by. Dr. Benjamin Brown is here. I don’t think he has ever been here before. How are you?
Dr. Brown: Great. How are you doing, Charles?
Charles: Doing good. So, give us a quick background on who you are if you don’t mind.
Dr. Brown: Sure, my name is Ben Brown. I am a neurosurgeon. I work for Ochsner. My main locus of practice is at St. Tammany Parish Hospital. Grew up in the area, in Covington. Went to St. Paul’s and LSU system through undergrad and medical school. Went away for a while; was in Jacksonville at the Mayo Clinic for the last five years, practicing there, and have recently come home, in 2019. I have been practicing neurosurgery since then at St. Tammany Parish Hospital.
Charles: What is the biggest thing that people get wrong about neurosurgery? I mean, I hear you say that, and I am immediately thinking, ‘Uh oh. A really smart guy – and of course that’s right – and what else?
Dr. Brown: I guess that we all do awake brain surgery all the time. It is not all kind of glamorous stuff like that nonstop. We do a lot of bread-and-butter spine procedures and that kind of thing. But also, high acuity brain things. But it is not “Gray’s Anatomy” all day all the time.
Charles: And then how much technology? I’m assuming that, like everything else, there’s just a ton of technology.
Dr. Brown: Yeah, there is just a ton of technology. I mean, really cool stuff, and that’s a lot of what St. Tammany has brought to the infrastructure there at the hospital. When I looked at my first go-around, when I came out of residency for a job, I did interview in this area. That was probably eight years ago or something. After going through a few years of my practice, I came back and took a look and things had dramatically changed with regard to growth in the neuroscience infrastructure.
And, so, things like: We use sort of navigation equipment for surgery in the brain – sort of like GPS for surgery – so we can hold an instrument over the patient’s head in real time and look up at a monitor and see that instrument overlaid on the patients MRI, so we know kind of exactly where to make an incision. That kind of thing.
I mentioned awake craniotomies. We’ve done a couple of those at St. Tammany Hospital, (which requires us) to be very precise about what area of the brain that we are dealing with and making sure we don’t injure a very important structure in the brain, etcetera. So, there is a lot of technology involved with neurosurgery. That is one of the things that attracted me to the field.
Charles: I am curious. It seems to me like we have figured out a lot of the body. The brain, though: Is there still a lot that we’re trying to figure out?
Dr. Brown: Yeah, there’s tons. In the early days of neurosurgery – well, that goes back to thousands of years ago, honestly – but in modern history, a patient making it out of the operating room was a great outcome. Now, more and more, it progressed to, “Can they move their arms when they get out of surgery?” And now it’s, “Can they still play the violin?” or “Can they do complex tasks?”
So the degrees with which we analyze the outcomes have become much more fine as we appreciate all the nuances of the various aspects of the brain. There is still so much we don’t know.
Charles: You talked earlier and got into this idea that when you first were looking around, there wasn’t as much by way of opportunity for somebody in your line of work around here. All of that has kind of grown – more opportunity, more things happening. It’s all about partnerships and teams working together. Touch on that, if you don’t mind.
Dr. Brown: Probably the biggest thing that happened was St. Tammany and Ochsner partnering at St. Tammany Parish Hospital, which was a great mix of the infrastructure that is on the ground and the great local network of physicians that St. Tammany has in a few specific areas, neurosurgery being one of them, neurology another. Ochsner brought in some of their personnel and the infrastructure that they have and the experience they have at main campus in building those kinds of programs and partnered with St. Tammany to provide those services. So, kind of immediately, there was a big influx of personnel in some subspecialty areas that could help augment the care that St. Tammany was already providing.
Since then, we have a practice, currently of three neurosurgeons. There is a much larger neurology practice. In the past few months, we just brought on board a dedicated neuro critical care unit to St. Tammany Hospital that is staffed by Ochsner critical care physicians. That allows us to treat higher acuity patients, be it stroke, be it trauma, be it brain tumors. It’s not just the surgery. The surgery can be intense, and it requires all the equipment and all that, but following that there can be a lot of medical care that is specific to neuro patients who benefit greatly from having a dedicated neuroscience unit, because the critical care needs of a stroke patient are often much different than the need of a heart patient.
Charles: And I guess one of the big take-aways is that they can all do that here now. Right? It is local as opposed to having to go somewhere.
Dr. Brown: That’s right. And you know for some of these emergency things, like trauma or stroke, “time is brain,” as they say about stroke. That is often a great message to get out as far as that acronym “FAST”: Face drooping, Arm weakness, Speech slurring, and Time is of the essence. (If you notice any of that), you have got to get to the hospital as quickly as possible. St. Tammany is a primary stroke center and can offer a lot of emergency care for stroke patients immediately, and then it has a great network to facilitate care if higher order things are needed.
Charles: Are there things we can do that can help us when it comes to our brains? Surely there are, I guess, right?
Dr. Brown: Yeah, there’s is not a specific supplement that we recommend for brain health, that kind of thing. It is more, I would say, from a cardiovascular standpoint: keeping the blood vessels healthy to the brain, to prevent a sort of build up of chronic microscopic strokes over time that interfere with how your brain functions. So, keeping that blood pressure normal. Keeping the cholesterol within normal limits. Watching your blood glucose. Staying fit with exercise regularly. Keeping the weight down. Those things go a long way for brain health, just like they do with the heart. Those are kind of the main things I would recommend.
Charles: As you look at where you are with your practice and kind of where we are going in terms of things here on the Northshore, do you see things continuing to evolve and more capability coming?
Dr. Brown: One-hundred percent. In the short time from the first go-around when I was looking for jobs to second go-around, there was an explosion of neuroscience care over here on the Northshore. My thought was, get in now and the next 15 to 20 years I expect will be a huge growth of neurosciences on the Northshore. I have been excited with the things that have already started. Like I said, since I have started practice here, getting that neuro critical care unit going was great. I’m very excited about what the next years have to come.
Charles: Alright, and as far as just the pickup line of a brain surgeon. I mean come on. I know you are a happily married man. I think there are fighter pilots and brain surgery ....
Dr. Brown: Yeah, I married my high school sweetheart, so I kind of squandered that whole thing.
Charles: Any jokes when you tell people what you do? I mean. how do they react to that? Because it is kind of a –
Dr. Brown: It is kind of a little bit of an awkward thing. But what do you do?
Charles: “I am literally a brain surgeon.”
Dr. Brown: Exactly. It has been good. I enjoy it. So ….
Charles: Alright, well this has been fun. Good conversation. Tim, what have I missed? Anything else we should have spoken to the doctor about. Are we good?
Tim: No, I think we are good. I really just appreciate today’s conversation. It really highlights that world-class healthcare close to home at St. Tammany Health System – and now with Ochsner – that we’re capable of giving our friends family on the Northshore.