The Year in Neurology, 2011 Drug approvals and New treatments for Neurological disorders?

Medscape Article: 

Andrew N. Wilner, MD writes about the recent developments in basic science and clinical medicine to treat some of the impending neurological diseases, including several FDA approval on new drugs, interesting article.

A Look Back: Introduction

2011 has been a very exciting year for neurologists and their patients. Advances in basic science and disciplined clinical trials have led to drug approvals for the prevention of stroke and treatment of epilepsy. In addition, at least 2 oral drugs for relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis, BG-12 and teriflunomide, boast positive results from phase 3 trials and are poised for approval by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
In 2010, the FDA approved dabigatran, a thrombin inhibitor, for anticoagulation in patients with nonvalvular atrial fibrillation. In November 2011, the FDA approved rivaroxaban, a once-daily oral factor Xa inhibitor, for the same indication. Another factor Xa inhibitor, apixaban, recently demonstrated superior results to warfarin in preventing stroke or systemic embolism, with less bleeding and lower mortality, and may soon be approved as well.^{[1]
Full article at Medscape linked at the top.} 

American Academy of Neurology-Policy on Intraoperative Neuromonitoring!

The American Academy of Neurology has put up this policy on Intraoperative Neuromonitoring, though old but it is interesting note some observations like the following multicenter evaluation study on SSEPs, it is an impressive result as far as SSEPs concerned.

2. Multicenter Data in Spinal Surgeries

An extensive multicenter study conducted in 1995 demonstrated that IOM using SEP reduced the
risk of paraplegia by 60% in spinal surgeries (Nuwer et al., 1995). The incidence of false
negative cases, wherein an operative complication occurred without having been detected by the
monitoring procedure, was small: 0.06% (Nuwer et al., 1995).