Meet our newest neurosugeon at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, Dr. S. Scott Lollis.

Dr. Lollis studied at Dartmouth College, Columbia University and the Cleveland Clinic before returning to Dartmouth-Hitchcock. He's been interested in medicine since the age of five.

Why was Dr. Lollis drawn to neurosurgery?

"It's a very mechanical field and it's very technological at the same time . . . We're exposed to and use, on a daily basis, some amazing 21st-century technology . . . The most important attraction of neurosurgery is that success tends to be fairly dramatic . . . patients often go from being very significantly disabled, even at risk of losing their life, and then make an astounding recovery. To participate in that, to help them in that, is obviously extremely rewarding."

"Metastatic tumors that have spread from somewhere else to the spine . . . sometimes will cause compression of the spinal cord or the roots of the spinal cord. That can cause significant disability. For patients that have those types of compressive problems, in many cases the best thing for them is to have an operation to decompress the spinal cord, decompress the nerve roots, before they have radiation. That represents a change in thinking for many doctors."

Dr. Lollis also discusses his latest research, particularly in magnetic resonance elastography, a new type of noninvasive imaging.

Learn more about neurosurgery at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center at http://bit.ly/dh_neurosurgery.