Noted Doctor Named to Head UCI Neurosurgery Unit : Medicine: The growing department will be led by Dr. Michael Dogali, one of the nation’s foremost experts in the field.
A noted New York doctor has been named the new chairman of the UCI Medical Center’s burgeoning neurological surgery department, hospital officials said Wednesday.
Dr. Michael Dogali served for six years as director of the functional and stereotactic neurosurgery division at New York University, hospital spokeswoman Fran Tardiff said.
Dogali is one of the nation’s foremost experts in functional neurosurgery, which focuses on surgery for movement disorders, pain alleviation and epilepsy, Tardiff said.
“You could consider it a real coup for UCI to draw this caliber of individual,” she said.
Five doctors currently work full-time in neurosurgery at the medical center, Tardiff said, and they see about 2,500 patients each year.
“UCI is sort of a sleeping giant,” said Dogali, who now lives in Newport Beach. “It is potentially the strongest neurosciences campus in the UC system.”
Dogali said the department will hire more doctors and provide new services in the coming months.
Two or three new neurosurgeons and five or six more neurologists will be recruited to the staff, he said. It’s all part of an expansion in the neurosciences.
“Major universities are certainly investing heavily in this area,” Dogali said. “So little has been done with the brain--it’s one of the last bastions of the unknown.”
UCLA and UC San Francisco have the top neurosciences programs in the University of California system, he said.
Dogali said UCI neurology experts will introduce unique programs at the hospital to manage pain, eliminate epileptic seizures, treat brain tumors and alleviate symptoms of movement disorders, such as Parkinson’s disease.
New virtual reality-style computer systems to be installed at the hospital will allow doctors to see problems in patients’ brains and map surgical procedures before operations, he said. Doctors will also introduce radiation as a precise surgery tool.
The expansion branches to the UCI campus. Construction of the first building in the UCI Center for the Health Sciences--a $22-million neuroscience research center--is scheduled next year.
Last September, UCI Chancellor Laurel L. Wilkening called for the university’s health scientists and other professors to step up efforts to attract research grants to campus. Dogali said he will continue his current research interests at the hospital and university.
A native of Bridgeport, Conn., Dogali received a bachelor’s degree in biology at Fairfield University. He received his doctorate at McGill University Medical School, where he was awarded the Robert Forsythe Prize in surgery. He completed further training in neurosurgery at the Montreal Neurological Institute and Duke University.
