Meet Pediatric Neurosurgeon Heather Spader, MD

As a pediatric neurosurgeon, Heather Spader, MD, has expertise in evaluating and treating a wide spectrum of childhood neurosurgical conditions.
Learn more at: uvahealth.com/findadoctor/Hea...
Transcript
I'm Heather Spader, I'm a pediatric neurosurgeon, and I'm the Division Chief for Pediatric Neurosurgery here at UVA.
I was always interested in the neurosciences. I felt like there's so much we don't understand, and there's so much yet to learn. And then I always liked pediatrics because I love the way that children always want to get better, and they do get better. And I like working with the families over a long period of time. Sometimes many, many years.
The relationship that a surgeon has with a patient and the family is extremely important. And that the families also always have to feel 100% comfortable with me and my team. And for that reason, I do spend a lot of time with the patients before surgery, after surgery, and making sure that we are always available.
Your child comes in with a brain tumor, and we have a child that comes in that is unresponsive because of the brain tumor. And you're able to take it out, and that child walks out and does very well. I think that is one of the most rewarding things that we do.
My commitment to my patients is to find the best possible treatment for you, and we have a very large team here at UVA neurosurgery. My goal is to figure out how we can get the best surgery for you with the best outcome, with the enormous resources that we have here in the Department of Neurosurgery at UVA.