NEW ORLEANS (April 18, 2005) In recognition of his many years of dedication to neurosurgical science and the medical community, Tetsuo Tatsumi, MD, FACS, has been named the recipient of the 2005 Humanitarian Award of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons (AANS). The award will be presented at 11:55 a.m. on Wednesday, April 20, at the AANS Annual Meeting, April 16-21, in New Orleans. Dr. Tatsumi is being commended for his extensive humanitarian efforts in Honduras and Guatemala.
Dr. Tatsumi has dedicated an extraordinary amount of volunteer hours, energy and support to advancing neurosurgery in Honduras through the Foundation for International Education in Neurological Surgery (FIENS). For the past six years, he has offered his services at the Hospital Escuela in Tegucipala, Honduras. He teaches doctors there about the latest, state-of-the-art neurosurgical techniques, providing them with instrumentation the facility would otherwise not be able to obtain. His considerable efforts have advanced the education and training of residents at the hospital.
In addition to his trips to Honduras, Dr. Tatsumi has volunteered significant time to advancing the training programs at Hospital San Juan de Dios and Hospital Roosevelt in Guatemala City, Guatemala.
The considerable international volunteer achievements of Dr. Tatsumi reflect his multicultural medical training. Dr. Tatsumi was born in Maebashi City, Japan. He studied medicine at the University of Gunma in Maebashi City, with a residency in neurology and psychiatry at Keio University in Tokyo. In 1958 he moved from Maebashi, Gunma, on the island of Honshu, to Jersey City, N.J., for a medical residency at Christ Hospital. Although daunting, Dr. Tatsumi managed to conquer the language barrier, and determined shortly after immigrating, that the career path for him was neurosurgery, rather than neurology. He completed a neurosurgery residency at Episcopal Hospital in Philadelphia in 1965, followed by the National Institutes of Health Special Fellowship in Neurosurgical Research in 1966.
Dr. Tatsumi retired from private practice in Canton, Ohio in 1996, and moved to Edwards, Colo., with his wife Cindy in 1998. In his spare time, Dr. Tatsumi is a Community Guest Services volunteer for Vail Resorts, showing people the ropes of the mountain. His firsthand experience operating on head injury patients inspired his successful efforts to encourage skiers to wear helmets, helping to prevent these debilitating and sometimes fatal injuries.
Founded in 1931 as the Harvey Cushing Society, the American Association of Neurological Surgeons (AANS) is a scientific and educational association with more than 6,800 members worldwide. The AANS is dedicated to advancing the specialty of neurological surgery in order to provide the highest quality of neurosurgical care to patients. All active members of the AANS are certified by the American Board of Neurological Surgery, the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons (Neurosurgery) of Canada or the Mexican Council of Neurological Surgery, AC. Neurological surgery is the medical specialty concerned with the prevention, diagnosis, treatment and rehabilitation of disorders that affect the entire nervous system including the spinal column, spinal cord, brain and peripheral nerves.
