Leon Dănăilă

Dănăilă worked for three years as a general practitioner with the sanitary district of Comănești and Dărmănești, in Bacău County. In 1961 he was appointed resident neurosurgeon at the Neurosurgery Clinic of Bucharest, where he has remained. He completed his specialty residency in 1966 and became a Doctor of Medicine - PhD - in 1973. In 1981 he was named a Senior Physician, 2nd degree, and became head of the Vascular Neurosurgery Department VII. In 1991, he was named Professor of Neurosurgery at the Bucharest Faculty of Medicine and Professor of Psychoneurology at the Titu Maiorescu University of Bucharest.

Dănăilă serves on the teaching board of the Faculty of Medicine at Bucharest, appointed in 1992. He has also been head of the Neurosurgery Department of that institution since 1996, in addition to President of the Romanian Neurosurgery Society since 1997. In 1980, Dănăilă was granted a Fulbright Scholarship, enabling him to work at the neurosurgery clinic of the University Hospital of New York. In July 1981 he travelled to the Netherlands for specialized studies in vascular neurosurgery and attended the Burdenke Neurosurgery Institute in Moscow.

Following his travels, Dănăilă was able to perform the most complex of neurosurgical operations, including occlusion of aneurysm of the arterial vertebro-basilar system, ablation of the third ventricle tumors, surgical management of skull base tumors, carotidian and middle cerebral endarterectomy, and extra- and intracranial anastomosis. He also succeeded in reducing operation mortality from operations to percentages comparable with those reported by the world's most reputable neurosurgical clinics. Thus the surgical mortality rate in Bucharest fell from 50% to 2-6% for acoustic nerve neuroma and from 49% to 3% for intracerebral aneurysm cases. These reductions were aided by the endowment of the operating theatre with a surgical microscope and laser. Up to the present, he had performed more than 40,200 surgical interventions, out of which 21,779 using the operation microscope, 729 through the use of laser and 18421 classic, without microscope and without laser.

Out of the total of 59 published books, he had been the sole author of 7 books, the primary author of 28 books, joint author, but not primary one, of 19 books, and contributing author in 3 books. Out of the 54 published books, textbooks and atlases,24 had been drawn up in English. He had published and had presented 404 scientific papers, as follows: 140 published abroad and in Romanian journals with international circulation(in English); 63 published in Romanian in various Romanian medical journals; 71 communicated to various international congresses, and 129 communicated to symposia and congresses in. His works are quoted by renowned scholars and researchers throughout the world.

1.”Leon Danaila – Recordman mondial in neurochirurgia vasculara”.Romania Libera(in Romanian).20 June 2007.Retrieved 16 November 2010

2.Membrii Academiei Romane din 1866 pana in prezent at the Romanian Academy site

• Romanian doctor still working at 82 as colleagues head to UK