DHC Pediatric Webinar - Pediatric Neurosurgery: A Cheat Sheet for the Primary Care Provider

Tuesday, December 9, 2025, 8:00 AM - Saturday, December 9, 2028, 9:00 AM

AMA PRA Category 1 Credits™ (1.00 hours), ANCC Nursing Contact Hours (1.00 hours), CME-Designated Participation Credit (1.00 hours)

This Pediatric Lecture Series will discuss important pediatric topics that may lead to the improvement of child health from an individual, health care system and/or societal level. This presentation provides information on screening, reporting, diagnosis, treatment, and referral options for pediatric neurosurgery.

Presenter

Matthew Vestal, MD, MBA
Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery
Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center

Matty Vestal MD, MBA, grew up just outside of New York City, born to a family of teachers and raised by a pair of retired nuns. Wanting originally to be an astronaut or an ice cream man, he didn’t fall in love with neuroscience until arriving at Johns Hopkins for undergrad, where he attended on a merit-based full tuition, Hodson Scholarship. Double Majoring in Neuroscience and Public Health, he graduated Hopkins with Summa Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa honors before matriculating at Yale Medical School where he met his wife Heather, who is also on staff here as an adult Psychiatrist. At Yale Med, Matty completed a master’s thesis based on fMRI and absence epilepsy research as the recipient of a Howard Hughes Research Fellowship and went on to additionally obtain a full French Culinary Arts Degree at the same time at the French Culinary Institute in New York City -- in case the whole “doctoring thing” didn’t work out. He matched in Neurosurgery at Harvard Medical School and completed his 7 years of intern through chief residency training at Brigham and Women’s and Boston Children’s Hospitals. During residency Matty attended Harvard Business School on full scholarship for two years, obtaining his full MBA and went on to be awarded the prestigious Shillito Fellowship in Pediatric Neurosurgery at Boston Children’s Hospital where he completed his pediatric neurosurgery training. He is a board-certified Neurosurgeon, fellow of both the Congress of Neurological Surgeons and the American Association of Neurological Surgeons and an invited member of the Senior Society of Neurologic Surgeons, one of the nation’s top neurosurgical honors. He practiced at Duke as a pediatric neurosurgeon and director of their comprehensive epilepsy program before his recruitment to Dartmouth where he currently serves as Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery and an Associate Professor of Surgery and Pediatrics. He is heavily involved in medical education at Geisel, teaching the On Doctoring course where he was selected as a member of Pine House and a Learning Collaboratives Clinical Mentor. He is the Associate Program Director of Dartmouth’s Neurosurgery Residency Program as well as the director of the medical school’s Neurosurgery Clerkship and Sub-Internship programs and he also serves as the formal neurosurgery subspecialty advisor for the Geisel students. Matty research is focused on ground breaking direct injection gene therapies and we invited him to grand rounds today to give us an update on Pediatric Neurosurgery at Dartmouth – a primer for the pediatrician.

1. Describe three neurological conditions commonly encountered in clinical practice that would benefit from a formal pediatric neurosurgical consultation.
2. Explain, in easy-to-understand language, three common neurosurgical procedures that could help patients in your community.

In support of improving patient care, Dartmouth Health is jointly accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME), the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education (ACPE), and the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC), to provide continuing education for the healthcare team. 

American Medical Association (AMA)
Dartmouth Health designates this Enduring Material for a maximum of 1.00 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit(s)™. Physicians should claim only the credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity. 

American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC)
Dartmouth Health designates this Enduring Material for a maximum of 1.00 ANCC contact hours.

All other learners may claim CME-designated participation credit. Consult your professional licensing board regarding the applicability and acceptance of CME-designated participation credit for programs certified for credit by organizations accredited by Joint Accreditation for Interprofessional Education.

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Bibliographic Material

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• Monteleone B, et al. BMC Neurol. 2020;9;20(1):12. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12883-019-1596-8

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Center for Learning and Professional Development
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Dartmouth Health
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Dartmouth Health adheres to the ACCME’s Standards for Integrity and Independence in Accredited Continuing Education.  Any individuals in a position to control the content of a CE activity, including planners, faculty, authors, or others are required to disclose all financial relationships with ineligible companies^.  All relevant financial relationships have been mitigated prior to the commencement of the activity.

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