Ralph G. Dacey Jr., M.D., the Henry G. and Edith R. Schwartz Professor and chairman of neurological surgery and neurosurgeon in chief at Barnes-Jewish Hospital, has been named chairman of the American Board of Neurological Surgery.
Established in 1940, the board sets the standards for training neurosurgeons in the United States and administers certification examinations for those seeking to practice neurosurgery in America. Dacey has served as a director of the board since 1999 and as secretary since 2000.
Ralph G. Dacey Jr.
“This position is considered to be the pinnacle award in the field of neurosurgery,” said outgoing chairman Arthur L. Day, M.D., professor of neurosurgery at Harvard Medical School and program director of neurosurgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.
“It requires someone who’s really thoughtful but also very well-balanced and able to deal with the variations that come up in today’s tumultuous medical environment. Ralph was chosen because he has all these qualities, and because he has done an excellent job leading the organization as secretary of the board for the past four years.”
Dacey is recognized for his long and distinguished career in neurosurgery, but he said the honor of serving as chairman is a particularly gratifying accomplishment.
“Neurosurgery is very complex, and training and certifying neurosurgeons is a terrific responsibility,” he said. “We’re constantly working to make the board’s operations more efficient and more accessible and transparent to the public so that people can have confidence in their specialists.”
According to Dacey, this is an exciting time for the organization because it is developing a new process for maintenance of certification. The new approach will be implemented over the next 18 months, and it will require neurosurgeons to regularly become recertified throughout their careers.
In addition to having an active general neurosurgery practice and serving as the neurosurgery consultant for the Rams, Blues and Cardinals, Dacey is internationally recognized for his contributions to understanding and treating conditions that affect blood vessels in and around the brain, including aneurysms and blood vessel malformations.
Among his extensive clinical accomplishments, he helped develop a device that uses magnets to guide surgical instruments through the brain and performed the first human magnetic surgery in 1998.
Magnetic surgery allows surgeons to work through small holes in the skull on regions deep within the brain while avoiding damaging other critical brain structures.
Additionally, through basic science research with Hans H. Dietrich, Ph.D., research assistant professor of neurological surgery, Dacey developed a way to study individual, hair-like microvessels located deep within the brain.
Dacey joined the School of Medicine faculty in 1989.
He has held numerous leadership positions within the neurosurgery community, including having served as president of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons and on the editorial boards of the Journal of Neurosurgery, Neurosurgery, Neurobiology of Disease and Perspectives in Neurological Surgery.