Simply the Best Pituitary Center brings life-changing treatment to thousands

Photo by Andrew Shurtleff

Dr. Edward Laws prepares to remove a pituitary tumor from a patient. These tumors account for 20 percent of all primary brain tumors, and Laws is internationally recognized as the top pituitary surgeon.

By Fariss Samarrai

Dr. Edward Laws stands on a wooden pedestal as he extracts a brain tumor through a woman’s right nostril. His resident, Dr. Adam Kanter, and a team of operating room specialists, have prepared the patient for the procedure by first anesthetizing her, and then, by sending long and slim instruments up the woman’s nostril, they have removed a thin wafer of bone, allowing direct access through the air sinuses to the pituitary gland at the base of the brain.

Laws’ job is to remove a tumor that has grown on the pituitary by carefully scraping loose and periodically removing fragments of the mass of bad cells while being careful to leave the healthy tissue of the pituitary and the brain intact. He does this while looking at the inside of the patient’s head through a binocular endoscope with a micro-camera attached, allowing everyone in the OR to observe the procedure on a video monitor. Full story.

Medical School breaks top 25
U.Va. graduate schools hold their
own in latest U.S. News rankings

Staff Report

At a time when fiscal and budgetary uncertainty is the norm in public higher education, five of the University’s graduate schools continue to be ranked among the best in the nation, by the latest U.S. News & World Report annual rankings of graduate schools and programs, which were released April 2.

While there were no significant changes overall, four U.Va. schools landed in the top 25 — including, for the first time, the School of Medicine, which moved up two notches to No. 25. The Law School, consistently ranked in the top 10, was ninth for the second year in a row. The Darden School moved from 11 to 12, the Curry School from 21 to 20, and the School of Engineering from 38 to 42. Full story.