[Music] so um in general let's just start with the difference between microscopy and endoscopy because we use both in neurosurgery um and so if you've ever seen neurosurgery or been around neurosurgery you know that you know microscopy is we use it on virtually every case in neurosurgery it's well established we've been doing it for 30 plus years now um it's part of your training it's part of what we do um and it provides a high resolution stereoscopic view however in narrow and deep surgical corridors and approaches uh you lose a lot of light actually and especially in a minimally invasive um surgical scenario that can be an issue and that's where the endoscope and a lot of open surgeries comes into comes into play and becomes a nice adjunct or even a primary tool for surgery um and as you know you know we're getting more minimally invasive all the time when it comes to surgical approaches in neurosurgery um so in in the setting of the microscope the surgeon actually works within the light beam which can also further diminish uh the intensity and the view in the surgical field meaning that your hands are in the surgical view in the microscope and with microscopy you can only visualize the surgical structures when they are located in direct view of the lens or they're directly in front of the lens with endoscopy the endoscope provides a panoramic view and this can be a major advantage in narrow and deep surgical corridors as you can see on the diagram on the right side of the screen if i'm looking in the ventricle i'm a lot closer to the structures of interest and uh i can directly visualize and i can bring the light source to the structure that i'm operating on uh in addition endoscopes are made with angled optics which allow me to look around a corner or behind structures as you can see this is a 30 example of a 30 degree endoscope uh where i can look around corners or behind the the surgical field in a way and this brings our eyes close to the target with great illumination in a deep field hey everyone ryan rad here from neurosurgerytraining.org if you like that video subscribe and donate to keep our content available for medical students across the world