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T M C ยป P U L S E | J U LY 2 0 1 8 29 number of traditional open hemi- spherectomy and hemispherotomy surgeries, believed there could be another option: a less invasive way to achieve seizure freedom. Before she met Umair, Lam had been working for months on a novel technique to do hemispherotomies through smaller surgical access points, reasoning that a smaller incision would mean easier recov- eries for her patients. She gathered tools already found in the operating rooms at Texas Children's for other minimally invasive procedures, and prepared by working in the surgical anatomy and cadaver lab at Baylor College of Medicine. She also devel- oped contingency plans alongside the technique so that her team could fall back to the traditional "open" method once the surgery began, if necessary. When she reached a point where she felt she could perform the procedure with the new, minimally-invasive technique, she waited for a patient whose condi- tion would lend itself to the highly specialized operation. "It was kind of a journey in responsible innovation," Lam said. "Instead of just trying this in any patient, we actually developed it in the surgical anatomy lab, and then very carefully picked our first cases based on who had the anat- omy that would really be the most amenable to this type of surgery. It's my job to worry and it's my job to be able to fix things, and Umair's anatomy, and his specific condition worked very well for this minimally- invasive technique." (continued) The Majeed family poses at home in Conroe, Texas, from left to right: Ashif, Umair, Ayan, Bushra and Sara.