Schaumburg, Ill. [September 4, 2025]—The Congress of Neurological Surgeons (CNS) proudly announces the winners of the ninth annual Paper of the Year awards, honoring the most-impactful papers published in Neurosurgery from June 2024 through May 2025.
The Paper of the Year awards highlight the collaboration between the CNS and Neurosurgery by calling special attention to papers that challenged dogma, created a paradigm shift, and/or encouraged surgeons to rethink approaches to patient care, big data, and trial results.
The Top Paper of the Year was awarded to “Three-Dimensional Morphological Change of Intracranial Aneurysms Before and Around Rupture” by Maarten J. Kamphuis, Kimberley M. Timmins, Hugo J. Kuijf, Eva K. L. de Graaf, Gabriel J. E. Rinkel, Mervyn D. I. Vergouwen, and Irene C. van der Schaaf.
“Again, this year our editorial board leaders selected important articles with a meaningful message on clinical care and neurosurgical science. We are very pleased to promote their work in this substantial way,” said Dr. Douglas Kondziolka, Editor-in-Chief of Neurosurgery Publications.
There is no doubt that the quality of neurosurgical science from across the world remains stellar.
Paper of the Year Section Level recipients are:
- Paper of the Year: Cerebrovascular: “Embolic Materials’ Comparison in Meningeal Artery Embolization for Chronic Subdural Hematomas: Multicenter Propensity Score–Matched Analysis of 1070 Cases” by Mohamed M. Salem, Ahmed Helal, Avi A. Gajjar, Georgios S. Sioutas, Jane Khalife, Okkes Kuybu, Kate Caroll, Alex Nguyen Hoang, Ammad A. Baig, Mira Salih, Cordell Baker, Gustavo Cortez, Zack Abecassis, Juan F. Ruiz Rodriguez, Jason M. Davies, C. Michael Cawley, Howard A. Riina, Alejandro M. Spiotta, Alexander A. Khalessi, Brian M. Howard, Ricardo Hanel, Omar Tanweer, Daniel A. Tonetti, Adnan H. Siddiqui, Michael J. Lang, Elad I. Levy, Christopher S. Ogilvy, Visish M. Srinivasan, Peter Kan, Bradley A. Gross, Brian T. Jankowitz, Michael R. Levitt, Ajith J. Thomas, Ramesh Grandhi, and Jan-Karl Burkhardt.
- Paper of the Year: Global Neurosurgery: “A Novel Approach for Free, Affordable, and Sustainable Microsurgery Laboratory Training for Low- and Middle-Income Countries: University of Wisconsin-Madison Microneurosurgery Laboratory Experience” by Abdullah Keles, Alberto Acitores Cancela, Charbel K. Moussalem, Yannick Canton Kessely, Zviad Malazonia, Jayunkumar M. Shah, Mehmet Sabri Gurbuz, Turab Gasimov, Adefisayo Adekanmbi, Mohammad Shahnawaz Bari, Chloe Dumot, Guillermo Garcia Oriola, Jared Paul U. Golidtum, Mohd Aidil Bin Mohd Nor, Ahmed Hussein Omar, Burak Ozaydin, Nirav J. Patel, Robert J. Dempsey, and Mustafa K. Baskaya.
- Paper of the Year: Neurotrauma and Critical Care: “Association Between Whole Blood Transfusion and Mortality Among Patients With Hemorrhagic Shock and Traumatic Brain Injury” by Makoto Aoki, Morihiro Katsura, and Kazuhide Matsushima.
- Paper of the Year: Pain: “Preoperative Opioid Use and Postoperative Outcomes in Patients Undergoing Microvascular Decompression for Trigeminal Neuralgia” by Anita L. Kalluri, Emeka Ejimogu, Collin Kilgore, Sumil K. Nair, Kathleen R. Ran, Mostafa Abdulrahim, Michael E. Xie, Kyra Halbert-Elliott, Vivek Yedavalli, Michael Lim, Christopher M. Jackson, Judy Huang, Chetan Bettegowda, and Risheng Xu.
- Paper of the Year: Pediatrics: “Changes on Cognition and Brain Network Temporal Variability After Pediatric Neurosurgery” by Xueyi Guan, Bohan Hu, Wenjian Zheng, Ning Chen, Xiang Li, Cuiling Hu, Xu Han, Zihan Yan, Zheng Lu, Yunwei Ou, and Jian Gong.
- Paper of the Year: Peripheral Nerve: “Algorithm Versus Expert: Machine Learning Versus Surgeon-Predicted Symptom Improvement After Carpal Tunnel Release” by Nina Louisa Loos, Lisa Hoogendam, John Sebastiaan Souer, Jeroen Hein van Uchelen, Harm Pieter Slijper, Robbert Maarten Wouters, Ruud Willem Selles, and The Hand-Wrist Study Group
- Paper of the Year: Socioeconomics, Health Policy, and Law: “The Impact of Intracranial Pressure Telesensors: An Observational Propensity-Matched Control Analysis of Service Demand and Costs” by Anand S. Pandit, Muhammad A. Kamal, Gerda Reischer, Yousif Aldabbagh, Mohammad Alradhawi, Faith M. Y. Lee, Priya P. Sekhon, Eleanor M. Moncur, Ptolemy D. W. Banks, Simon Thompson, Lewis Thorne, Laurence D. Watkins, and Ahmed K. Toma.
- Paper of the Year: Spine: “What Are We Transfusing? Evaluating the Quality and Clinical Utility of Intraoperatively Salvaged Red Blood Cells in Spinal Deformity Surgery: A Nonrandomized Controlled Trial”by David B. Kurland, Daniel Alber, Andrew Smith, Shah Ahmed, Daniel Orringer, Anthony Frempong-Boadu, and Darryl Lau.
- Paper of the Year: Stereotactic and Functional: “A Speech Neuroprosthesis in the Frontal Lobe and Hippocampus: Decoding High-Frequency Activity into Phonemes” by Ariel Tankus, Einat Stern, Guy Klein, Nufar Kaptzon, Lilac Nash, Tal Marziano, Omer Shamia, Guy Gurevitch, Lottem Bergman, Lilach Goldstein, Firas Fahoum, and Ido Strauss.
- Paper of the Year: Tumor: “Genomic Alterations in Molecularly Defined Oligodendrogliomas” by Carly Weber-Levine, Maureen Rakovec, Kelly Jiang, Anita Kalluri, Divyaansh Raj, Megan Parker, Joshua Materi, Sadra Sepehri, Abel Ferres, Karisa C. Schreck, Iban Aldecoa, Calixto-Hope G. Lucas, Kristin J. Redmond, Matthias Holdhoff, Haris I. Sair, Jon D. Weingart, Henry Brem, Josep Gonzalez S ´ anchez, Xiaobu Ye, Chetan Bettegowda, Jordina Rincon-Torroella.
The CNS congratulates all Paper of the Year winners.
###
About Neurosurgery Publications
Neurosurgery is the official publication of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons. Neurosurgery provides multimedia, prompt publication of scientific articles on clinical or experimental surgery topics important for the brain, spine, and peripheral nerves, reviews, and other information of interest to readers across the world. Clinical Neurosurgery, published annually as a supplement to Neurosurgery, is the official register of the CNS Annual Meeting. Operative Neurosurgery is focused on the technical aspects of the discipline featuring operative procedures, anatomy, instrumentation, devices, and technology. Operative Neurosurgery is the practical resource for cutting-edge material that connects the surgeon directly to the operating room. Neurosurgery Practice publishes scientific articles, both clinical and experimental, from across the neurosurgical subspecialties including but not limited to vascular, spine, and tumor. Neurosurgery Practice features clinical research, reviews, case instructions, and other information of interest to neurosurgeons. Neurosurgery Practice is an online-only, fully Open Access publication with content publishing under either the Creative Commons Attribution CC-BY-NC-ND or CC-BY license.
About the Congress of Neurological Surgeons
The Congress of Neurological Surgeons (CNS) is the global leader in neurosurgical education, serving to promote health by advancing neurosurgery through innovation and excellence in education. The CNS provides leadership in neurosurgery by inspiring and facilitating scientific discovery and its translation into clinical practice. The CNS maintains the vitality of the profession through volunteer efforts of its members and the development of leadership in service to the public, to colleagues in other disciplines, and to neurosurgeons throughout the world in all stages of their professional lives. For more information, visit