Threats to academic neurosurgery in the United Kingdom: a personal view.

Money, or lack of it, is but one, albeit very important, threat to academic neurosurgery. This review has rambled over some of the other minefields and self-inflicted hurdles. The path of academic progress is long and tortuous. Time has to be found in neurosurgery to examine critically the opportunities and threats posed by a changing world to our goals of establishing standards of patient care, research, and the flexible training of the next generation.