The purpose of this review article is to showcase the importance of neurosurgical care in third world countries, including the lack of support and awareness among developed countries on this issue.
A summary of available data on neurosurgical mission trips has been collected from PubMed and Google Scholar on the following mesh keywords: Neurosurgery trips, mission neurosurgery, and neurosurgery in third world countries. We gathered our information that was closely related to neurosurgical education such as proficiency, equipment, ethics and outcomes (Figure 1).
Figure 1: Visual representation of acquired data on neurosurgical capacity in low and middle-income countries. View Figure 1
The neurosurgical workforce in third world countries is still scarce as awareness on the lack of specialized surgical care is still underdeveloped worldwide. In addition to the lack of neurosurgeons, the unavailability of specialized equipment is still one of the main concerns of visiting neurosurgeons.
The analyzed summary on the role of neurosurgeons in third world countries showcased improved surgical skills for neurosurgeons themselves, and proved to be a positive indicator on the improvement of healthcare worldwide.