Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health has exceeded expectations
Dr. Marwan Sabbagh is director of the Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health. (Wade Vandervort)
When the Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health opened a decade ago, it would have been difficult to forecast the facility’s success.
“The idea of brain health and the idea of prevention, those were crazy ideas 10 years ago, but now they’re part of what we do,” said Dr. Marwan Sabbagh, the center’s director. “The field has advanced, and we’ve gone from being non-existing to being front and center in the conversation.”
When it opened in 2009, the center had about three dozen employees. As it celebrates its 10-year anniversary this month, it has nearly five times that, and as Sabbagh puts it, a place among the top brain health research and care facilities anywhere.
“We’re one of the major drivers … right here in Las Vegas,” Sabbagh said. “When people want to know what the next big thing is with brain health, they turn to us. That’s why I came here. You can be an observer, a participant or a leader, and we’re a leader.”
Sabbagh himself is also a leader in his field and came to the Valley in early 2018 from the Barrow Neurological Institute at Dignity Health St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix.
The Ruvo Center, which initially expected about 5,000 patient visits per year, had nearly 30,000 visits in 2018.
“We’ll blow well past that number for 2019,” Sabbagh said. “We’ve grown beyond what anyone could have ever imagined. We’re going to keep growing, too.”
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