By combining talent, technology and a culture of teamwork, Nemours Children’s Hospital, Florida advances its goal of remaining a leader in pediatric neurology and neurosurgical care that proactively pioneers new treatments and diagnostic methods.

Before becoming the newest neurosurgeon at Nemours Children’s Hospital in Orlando, Myron Rolle, MD, played football both at Florida State University and in the NFL, where he learned invaluable lessons about what exemplary teamwork can accomplish.

“I’ve been on some teams where there wasn’t that collective goal of achieving success together: We weren’t a cohesive unit, everybody was playing for themselves, everybody was out of position, and it really affected our performance,” he begins.

“But the teams that I have been on where we all talked and communicated on the field and off the field, where we trusted each other and held each other accountable, those teams performed much better—even with less talent.”

Today, his team includes a roster teeming “with a lot of talent working in an environment where the best outcomes can be achieved.” One of those fellow compassionate, highly trained neurosurgeons is Greg Olavarria, MD, who adds that everyone working together to provide holistic, deeply personalized care for every young patient—as well as the emotional support they and their loved ones need in the face of daunting diagnoses—goes a long way in amplifying the impact of world-class care accessible to Central Florida.

“There are no silos here,” Dr. Olavarria affirms, adding that it’s an additional asset to have an array of specializations represented in the team, like his own focus on epilepsy and Dr. Rolle’s expertise with brain tumors. “From the very moment a patient becomes a surgery candidate, we manage the patient together so everyone’s on the same team, everyone is taking group ownership of the patient, who is not just a number: That patient is a unique individual.”

Dr. Olavarria also lauds the technological advancements that Nemours invests in as being hugely beneficial to the preventative care and minimally invasive procedures that ensure even better patient outcomes. He notes that combining technology and talent has ensured that Nemours stays at the forefront of neurosurgical care for kids by pioneering not only new treatments but also new ways to arrive at an actionable diagnosis, especially from his vantage point of epilepsy specialization where “zero seizures” is the goal.

“What we’re doing here is evolving because they’re not just expanding the neurosciences: Nemours invested in them,” he says. “When you put electrodes on the surface of a child’s skin and do monitoring, it doesn’t give you a picture of what’s going on deep inside the crevices of the brain, where all those hills and valleys can hide seizures. Here, right down the hall, I have a state-of-the-art ROSA Robot to put very precise electrodes in children’s brains to diagnose where the seizures are coming from. … In the past, we would open the skull to put a sheet of electrodes on the surface of the brain, called a grid. Those grids cover the surface of the brain, and there’s a higher risk to the patient; now, precisely placed electrodes that are less than two millimeters wide can be implanted with tremendous safety and accuracy.”

As a dedicated leader in treating pediatric brain and spinal cord conditions, Nemours’ neuroscience center additionally provides highly advanced, seamlessly integrated medical services designed exclusively for children and teenagers with neurological and neuromuscular conditions, like the brachial plexus birth injuries, chiari malformations, hydrocephalus, spina bifida, syringomyelia and tumors that Drs. Rolle, Olavarria, and Dr Gegg are experts in treating.
Nemours also demonstrates a deep community commitment, which was a significant differentiator drawing both neurosurgeons to the hospital system.

“I see health care as a right, not a privilege: It shouldn’t be a selective process for individuals who are affluent or who have the means, resources and access, and who often have the redundancies in their lifestyles so they can withstand a pandemic or a child’s serious illness without going bankrupt or having their whole life disrupted in ways that are unrecoverable,” says Dr. Rolle. “If you’re taking that action, you’re building that trust with communities that traditionally say, ‘No, I just don’t believe in health care because they experiment on us, they don’t care about us, no one there speaks my language or understands my culture or gets where I’m coming from.’ When you break down that barrier of trust, when you start getting into those communities, you can save a lot of lives by educating them about preventative care—and that’s something I am fired up about.”

At Nemours, the focus is on the whole child, and the family. The doctors believe in addressing the concerns of the parents as well, especically in times of stress and uncertainty. Whole child care means attending to the child’s mental and emotional wellbeing, and social or home-life concerns, not just on the physical or clinical diagnosis being treated. Being personally invested in every patient also means sharing in their victories and delighting in their recoveries, which both pediatric neurosurgeons agree is the best part of their job.

“There are no words to describe it,” enthuses Dr. Olavarria.

“One of our first cases with the [ROSA] robot was a young lady who was back to tumbling and flipping with her gymnastics team six months after surgery, when five or 10 years ago we would have had a hard time even finding out where her seizures were coming from. Now, she’s completely seizure-free—and I want other families to know that epilepsy care is available to them at Nemours Children’s Hospital.”

“That’s the part of what excited me about pediatric neurosurgery: These kids are so resilient and have so much desire to be fully functional , and all they want is to play video games, ride their bike again, talk on the phone with their girlfriend or boyfriend, just go back to being kids and teenagers,” Dr. Rolle adds. “I love it when you’re walking into a room and the patient has their legs crossed on the bed and they’ve got their phone in their hand texting their friends and looking at TikTok just like they’re at home. And it’s because they’re finally living a life without symptoms and without pain.”

Nemours Children’s Health
Orlando
(407) 650-7715
Nemours.org