Sharona Ben-Haim, MD
- Neurosurgeon
- Surgical Director of Epilepsy
- Associate Professor of Neurological Surgery
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Sharona Ben-Haim, MD, is a neurosurgeon who specializes in caring for people with treatment-resistant epilepsy and movement disorders such as Parkinson's disease, dystonia and essential tremor and spasticity. She also treats chronic pain, including facial pain and trigeminal neuralgia, as well as pain related to spinal conditions.
Dr. Ben-Haim performs deep brain stimulation (DBS) surgeries, including "awake" microelectrode-guided DBS and "asleep" MRI- and CT-guided DBS.
She is an expert in leading-edge surgical epilepsy treatments, including selective temporal lobectomies, responsive neurostimulation, and MRI-guided laser induced interstitial thermotherapy (laser ablation) for treatment-resistant epilepsy as well as gamma knife radiosurgery.
Dr. Ben-Haim's research is focused on novel tools that will help localize and treat epileptic seizures more selectively using minimally invasive techniques. Dr. Ben-Haim's work in movement disorders and improvements in technique for deep-brain stimulation insertion has been published in numerous peer-reviewed journals, including European Spine Journal, Neurosurgery, Journal of Craniofacial Surgery, World Neurosurgery, Pediatric Neurosurgery, Neuropathology, and Stereotactic and Functional Neurosurgery. In 2014, she authored a book chapter for Textbook of Cortical Brain Stimulation.
Dr. Ben-Haim has been invited to present nationally on topics including risk factors for hemorrhage during deep brain stimulation and occupational hazards in neurosurgical training. She was recently named chair-elect of Women in Neurosurgery (WINS), the world's first and largest organization dedicated to educating, inspiring and encouraging women neurosurgeons to realize their professional and personal goals.
She completed a fellowship in epilepsy and functional surgery at Yale School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut, and was a visiting fellow in functional neurosurgery at University of Oxford in Oxford, England. Dr. Ben-Haim completed residency training in neurosurgery at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York. She earned her medical degree from UC San Diego School of Medicine.
Dr. Ben-Haim has received several awards over the years, including the Robert E. Hertzka Student Leadership Award from the San Diego County Medical Society, and the Grace Fimognari Memorial Award from the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, Honors Research Committee at University of California, Berkeley. She serves as neurosurgeon liaison to the executive committees for the American Society for Stereotactic and Functional Neurosurgery and the Pain Section of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons.
In addition to the location listed above, Dr. Ben-Haim also sees patients in Carlsbad.
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