- Email: [email protected]
Susan Spencer
2009 American Epilepsy Society
Obituary
Susan Spencer Neurosurgeon and leading expert in epilepsy. Born on July 9, 1948, in Budapest, Hungary, she died from an acute intestinal illness on May 21, 2009, in Salt Lake City, UT, USA, aged 60 years. Susan Spencer, who directed the Clinical Epilepsy Service and Electro-physiological Monitoring Unit at Yale New Haven Hospital for over 22 years, developed and applied new medical imaging techniques for treating epilepsy with surgery. She dedicated her career to studying how surgery could improve the quality of life of patients with epilepsy. With her long-time collaborator and husband, Dennis Spencer, professor and chair of neurosurgery at Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA, she pioneered the use of intracranial electrode monitoring and magnetic resonance imaging to identify seizuregenerating regions of the brain that could be targeted for resective surgery in patients with epilepsy. They were also able to correlate pathology and EEG measurements to better characterise how epilepsy affects an individual patient. “She was a driving force for pioneering technology and new methods [in epilepsy surgery]”, said John Swann, a professor in the department of pediatrics and neuroscience at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, TX, USA, who served with Spencer on the board of directors of the American Epilepsy Society. When Spencer began to develop new techniques for epilepsy surgery early in her career, she also started to study patients’ outcomes and their quality of life after surgical 680
procedures. She defined many parameters that became part of a metric for determining the success of epilepsy surgery, previously measured largely by a reduction in the number of seizures. In one 10-year prospective study, published in Neurology, she and her colleagues monitored the outcomes of 400 patients with temporal lobe epilepsy treated with surgery at several US medical centres. They found that seizure cessation, rather than just a reduction in the number of seizures, was the best predictor of a patient’s quality of life. In 2006, Spencer co-authored a report in Epilepsia on epilepsy incidence and prevalence, mortality, quality of life, stigma, treatment access, disparities, and the disorder’s cost to society in North America. “It was an important document because it told us about underserved populations not only in the Caribbean but even in the US”, said Swann. Noting the time and energy demands of surveying epilepsy research and clinical care throughout North America, Swann added: “Susan was an example of someone willing to go the extra mile for her area of study and also for people with epilepsy.” Spencer, who was Director of the Epilepsy Programme at Yale University School of Medicine, was recognised internationally for her work on epilepsy and she lectured on her specialty worldwide. “As a physician, she spent the time needed, not allotted”, said Anne Williamson, a professor of neurosurgery at Yale University who worked with Spencer at the Yale Epilepsy Center. Recalling Spencer’s schedule for seeing patients, working with fellows, writing papers—she published more than 200 research articles—and being “an amazing mom”, Williamson said, “I have no idea how she did what she did”. Spencer graduated from the University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, USA, with a degree in chemistry in 1970 and then a medical degree 4 years later. From 1980 until the time of her death, she was a professor of neurology at the Yale University School of Medicine, also becoming a professor of neurosurgery in 2004. Spencer was a member of many professional organisations, including the American Academy of Neurology and the American Epilepsy Society, where, as President, she co-founded and co-edited the journal Epilepsy Currents. She also received the American Epilepsy Society Clinical Research Award in 2003. Her recent research focused on characterising how excitatory and inhibitory brain networks across multiple regions give rise to epilepsy. She and her colleagues were among the first researchers to investigate these networks in patients and to assess how characterising them could inform treatment. Spencer is survived by her husband, Dennis Spencer, two daughters, a stepdaughter, and a stepson.
Alison Snyder [email protected]
www.thelancet.com Vol 374 August 29, 2009
Obituary
Susan Spencer Neurosurgeon and leading expert in epilepsy. Born on July 9, 1948, in Budapest, Hungary, she died from an acute intestinal illness on May 21, 2009, in Salt Lake City, UT, USA, aged 60 years. Susan Spencer, who directed the Clinical Epilepsy Service and Electro-physiological Monitoring Unit at Yale New Haven Hospital for over 22 years, developed and applied new medical imaging techniques for treating epilepsy with surgery. She dedicated her career to studying how surgery could improve the quality of life of patients with epilepsy. With her long-time collaborator and husband, Dennis Spencer, professor and chair of neurosurgery at Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA, she pioneered the use of intracranial electrode monitoring and magnetic resonance imaging to identify seizuregenerating regions of the brain that could be targeted for resective surgery in patients with epilepsy. They were also able to correlate pathology and EEG measurements to better characterise how epilepsy affects an individual patient. “She was a driving force for pioneering technology and new methods [in epilepsy surgery]”, said John Swann, a professor in the department of pediatrics and neuroscience at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, TX, USA, who served with Spencer on the board of directors of the American Epilepsy Society. When Spencer began to develop new techniques for epilepsy surgery early in her career, she also started to study patients’ outcomes and their quality of life after surgical 680
procedures. She defined many parameters that became part of a metric for determining the success of epilepsy surgery, previously measured largely by a reduction in the number of seizures. In one 10-year prospective study, published in Neurology, she and her colleagues monitored the outcomes of 400 patients with temporal lobe epilepsy treated with surgery at several US medical centres. They found that seizure cessation, rather than just a reduction in the number of seizures, was the best predictor of a patient’s quality of life. In 2006, Spencer co-authored a report in Epilepsia on epilepsy incidence and prevalence, mortality, quality of life, stigma, treatment access, disparities, and the disorder’s cost to society in North America. “It was an important document because it told us about underserved populations not only in the Caribbean but even in the US”, said Swann. Noting the time and energy demands of surveying epilepsy research and clinical care throughout North America, Swann added: “Susan was an example of someone willing to go the extra mile for her area of study and also for people with epilepsy.” Spencer, who was Director of the Epilepsy Programme at Yale University School of Medicine, was recognised internationally for her work on epilepsy and she lectured on her specialty worldwide. “As a physician, she spent the time needed, not allotted”, said Anne Williamson, a professor of neurosurgery at Yale University who worked with Spencer at the Yale Epilepsy Center. Recalling Spencer’s schedule for seeing patients, working with fellows, writing papers—she published more than 200 research articles—and being “an amazing mom”, Williamson said, “I have no idea how she did what she did”. Spencer graduated from the University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, USA, with a degree in chemistry in 1970 and then a medical degree 4 years later. From 1980 until the time of her death, she was a professor of neurology at the Yale University School of Medicine, also becoming a professor of neurosurgery in 2004. Spencer was a member of many professional organisations, including the American Academy of Neurology and the American Epilepsy Society, where, as President, she co-founded and co-edited the journal Epilepsy Currents. She also received the American Epilepsy Society Clinical Research Award in 2003. Her recent research focused on characterising how excitatory and inhibitory brain networks across multiple regions give rise to epilepsy. She and her colleagues were among the first researchers to investigate these networks in patients and to assess how characterising them could inform treatment. Spencer is survived by her husband, Dennis Spencer, two daughters, a stepdaughter, and a stepson.
Alison Snyder [email protected]
www.thelancet.com Vol 374 August 29, 2009