Dr Ng Hua Bak Ivan

Dr Ivan Ng is a neurosurgeon at Mount Elizabeth Novena Hospital, Singapore.

With more than 20 years’ experience in the field, he provides specialised care in skull base neurosurgery, brain tumour treatments and neurovascular surgery. In addition to brain and spinal tumours, he treats conditions such as aneurysms, arteriovenous malformations, back and neck pain, degenerative spine, hydrocephalus, moyamoya disease (a rare condition where the blood vessels that supply blood to the brain become narrowed), occlusive disease and trigeminal neuralgia.

Prior to setting up his private practice, Dr Ng was a senior consultant at the National Neuroscience Institute (NNI). During his tenure, he served as the deputy director of the institution as well as the head of department of both the NNI campuses at Tan Tock Seng Hospital and Singapore General Hospital. He was also instrumental in setting up several research laboratories while he was there as well as the acute brain injury programme. He continues to be a visiting consultant at NNI.

Upon graduation from the faculty of medicine at the National University of Singapore, Dr Ng underwent basic training and completed specialty training in surgery. Then, through the Health Manpower Development Plan award, he attended a 2-year fellowship programme at Addenbrooke's Hospital, UK. There, he served as the chief resident of the neurosurgical unit. In 2000, he was admitted as an inter-collegiate fellow to the Royal College of Surgeons (surgical neurology) and at the same time, was awarded the Norman Dott Medal for most outstanding performance.

He introduced high-flow EC-IC bypass operations for complex neurosurgical scenarios and performed the earliest awake craniotomy for brain tumour in Parkway in 2012. He performs 150 to 180 major neurosurgical operations a year.

He is the course director for the Aesculap Academy in minimally invasive neurosurgery and the AO Foundation course director for neurotrauma in the Asia-Pacific region. He is also the past vice-president of the Asian Congress of Neurological Surgeons, and executive committee member at the Society of Intensive Care Medicine (Singapore) and the Asia Pacific Brain Injury Consortium.

Dr Ng is an associate professor and director of the brain and behaviour programme at Duke-NUS Medical School. He is also an external lecturer at the School of Health Sciences at Nanyang Polytechnic, as well as an external examiner for the conjoined Edinburgh-Hong Kong Neurosurgery exit examinations.

In the field of research, he used to head the acute brain injury research team at NNI and has been the principal investigator of more than 20 research projects. He is also published in numerous peer-reviewed journals. A frequently mentioned name at conferences, Dr Ng has been an invited speaker at more than 100 Asia-Pacific and international neurosurgical meetings.

With an interest to serve the public, Dr Ng has been a volunteer doctor at St Andrew’s Hospital and TOUCH Community Services. He was also part of the Singapore volunteer overseas team to the Philippines during the Mount Pinatubo eruption.