Cleveland Clinic Hosts Third Annual Skull Base Surgery Workshop in Florida

Planning is underway for the 3^rd annual Cleveland Clinic Microscopic and Endoscopic Skull Base Surgery Workshop, an intensive, three-day workshop that gives attendees hands-on experience in different complex approaches and contemporary management of patients with skull base pathologies.

Hosted by Cleveland Clinic’s neurosurgery teams in Florida, Ohio and Abu Dhabi, the workshop will be held November 13-15, 2025, at the Miami Anatomical Research Center in Doral, Florida.

“To my knowledge, this is the only educational course that brings together the whole Cleveland Clinic enterprise skull base surgery team to teach neurosurgeons and otolaryngologists how to approach very complex tumors,” says Hamid Borghei-Razavi, MD, FACS, Director of the Brain Tumor and Pituitary Center for Cleveland Clinic in Florida and one of the workshop’s faculty.

Dr. Borghei-Razavi specializes in brain tumor surgery, open and endoscopic skull base surgery, pituitary surgery, and trigeminal neuralgia. He also serves as Education Director of Cleveland Clinic’s Neuroscience Institute in Florida and as Associate Professor of Neurological Surgery at Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine.

Rare training opportunity

Multidisciplinary skull base surgery is a fairly young subspecialty, points out Dr. Borghei-Razavi. There are less than two dozen skull base fellowship programs participating with the North American Skull Base Society Fellowship Match Program and many were established in the last 15 years. That includes the clinical fellowship at Cleveland Clinic Weston Hospital in Florida, which was established in 2019.

“There are limited educational opportunities for surgeons to gain the knowledge and to practice the essential skills needed to perform the intricate surgery required to reach the structures deep around the brain,” states Dr. Borghei-Razavi. “Our workshop provides participants access to innovative anatomical and technical concepts for treating complex pathologies and immersive simulations to improve their skills.”

Open to 20 neurosurgeons and otolaryngologists interested in skull base surgery, the educational event attracts U.S.-based and international attendees. A third of last year's trainees were from abroad, including Canda, Brazil, Colombia and Turkey.

Dr. Borghei-Razavi notes the annual event is also an opportunity for the Cleveland Clinic team to share best practices and promote innovation. “These kind of courses make us into better surgeons with better outcomes,” he adds.

Less invasive surgical approaches

Thanks to technology advancements and improved anatomical understanding of the region, many skull base tumors can now be removed using either minimally invasive microscopic or endoscopic techniques. These less invasive procedures include supraorbital or transorbital craniotomy, and endoscopic endonasal surgery, among many others. They are designed to maximize lesion resection while preserving neurological function.

“We devote two days of the workshop to microsurgical approaches while the third day is focused on endoscopic endonasal techniques,” says Dr. Borghei-Razavi. “The latter is used to access the sellar, medial and most of the lateral areas of the skull base through a natural corridor. This causes less tissue trauma and a faster recovery for patients with less pain and no external scarring.”

At Cleveland Clinic in Florida, he notes, most pituitary adenomas are endoscopically resected as are many other types of skull base tumors, such as intraventricular tumors and cysts, tumors in the orbital apex, or tuberculum sellae meningioma.

Advanced visualization technology

Each day of the workshop includes about three hours of lectures conducted by Cleveland Clinic faculty and two guest faculty, as well as six hours of practical instruction in the facility’s wet lab. The lab is equipped with the latest technology and instrumentation, including endoscopes, operating microscopes, and the more advanced 3D exoscope.

Trainees also practice with an intraoperative neuronavigation system that uses high-resolution MRI and CT imaging to precisely localize lesions and avoid injury to critical neural and vascular structures. In addition, this will be the first year workshop attendees use an augmented reality (AR) system as an anatomical learning tool.

Dr. Borghei-Razavi and his Florida colleagues were the first in the Cleveland Clinic enterprise to use the AR technology to plan tumor surgeries. The navigation system combines surgical planning software and MRI data to create 3D anatomical models and 2D image slices.

“Our surgical team uses the AR head-mounted display to collaborate in real time on potential surgical approaches and to plan the best route based on the patient’s unique anatomy,” explains Dr. Borghei-Razavi. “The goal is to identify the shortest distance to the lesion with the greatest exposure that will allow for the safest resection.”

Learning objectives

Being able to determine the best skull base approach for individual patients is an essential skill and one of the learning objectives for course participants, which includes:

• Comprehending the microsurgical anatomy relevant to different approaches to the skull base.
• Demonstrating the decision making process involved in selecting different skull base approaches, according to the precise location of the lesion.
• Establishing skull base techniques and refinement of surgical abilities used for skull base approaches.
• Identifying advantages and limitations of transcranial and endoscopic approaches to different skull base regions.
• Describing the indications, risks, and benefits of different skull base approaches.

Workshop registration

The workshop is intended for neurosurgeons and otolaryngologists interested in skull base surgery. It fully complies with ACCME Standards for Integrity and Independence in Accredited Continuing Education. Visit https://www.clevelandclinicmeded.com/live/courses/skullbaseworkshop/ for more details.

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