Neurosurgery or neurological surgery is a specialty of modern medicine which focuses on diagnosing and treating ailments related to brain, spine and peripheral nerves.  Neural and spine surgery mainly deals with restoration of functionality, pain reduction, and improving quality of life for patients suffering from spinal and neurologic diseases. Consulting a neurosurgeon does not always means one needs surgery. Many problems may be treated by medications, simple interventions or injections and some may need surgery.

It has a number of sub specialties – broadly divided into

1. Brain surgery

            Focused on treating pathologies of brain like traumatic brain and skull injuries, brain tumors, brain hemorrhage, stroke, vascular pathology/ abnormalities, epilepsy surgery, congenital anomalies, infections etc.

2. Spine surgery

            Treatment of spine disorders involving the vertebral bones, disc, facet joints, nerves, spinal cord and blood vessels of the spine. Various pathologies affect the spine including congenital abnormalities, degenerative changes, kyphoscoliosis, fractures, infections, tumors, bleed and spinal cord or nerve injuries.

3. Endovascular neuro interventions

             Endovascular means from inside or within the vessel. It is a subspecialty which employs fluoroscopic guidance to diagnose and treat vascular pathologies of brain and spinal cord without open surgery. It is similar to interventional cardiology and can also be called as Interventional neurology/neuroradiology.

4. Pain interventions

              Many patients suffer from neuropathic or neuralgic pain – pain that arises from nerve irritation or pathology. These may be arising from within the nerves of brain – trigeminal neuralgia, cephalgia, glossopharyngeal neuralgia or from the spine – radiculopathy or even peripheral nerves. Some subset of these patients who don’t respond to medications may be treated with targeted injections or small interventions (like nerve ablation) and thus avoid surgery.

5. Peripheral nerve surgeries

              Peripheral nerve pathologies like tumors, nerve injuries, brachial plexus injuries are also treated with multidisciplinary approach.

6. Neuromodulation

              This is an evolving branch of neurosurgery. It is the alteration of nerve activity by targeted delivery of electrical or pharmaceutical agents. They can be used to treat various disease or symptom from headaches to tremors to spinal cord damage to urinary incontinence. 
Most frequently, people think of neuromodulation in the context of chronic pain relief, the most common indication. However, there are a plethora of neuromodulation applications, such as deep brain stimulation (DBS) treatment for Parkinson's disease, sacral nerve stimulation for pelvic disorders and incontinence, and spinal cord stimulation.