Dr. Arthur L. Jenkins is a board certified, fellowship trained neurosurgeon who specialises in spinal surgery in his “academic” private practice (Jenkins NeuroSpine). He has developed a dozen minimally invasive treatments to improve surgical outcomes for patients with disorders from the skull base to the tailbone; as well he holds patents and patent applications on a dozen different ways to improve patient outcomes. He is developing new treatments with other academic researchers, start-up biotech companies, and private practice experts in several fields. He specialises in minimally invasive treatments for all treatments to reduce recovery times and improve outcomes (including common spinal conditions such as herniated disks and spinal stenosis), as well as rare, poorly understood conditions (like craniocervical instability and autonomic dysfunction, Thoracic Outlet Syndrome, Bertolotti’s Syndrome, among others) where his insights are changing lives and practice patterns around the world. He treats all patients (local or international) with his combination of passion, empathy, and unparalleled diagnostic and surgical skills, out of his offices and hospitals in the New York City Region. He is on every top doctor list for which he is eligible, including: Vitals “Top 1%” of Neurosurgeons, Castle Connelly “Top Doctors” lists for the New York region, the United States, and for Cancer, New York Magazine’s “Top Doctors”, among others.
SSN: What drove you to choose surgery as a career, and spinal surgery in particular?
AJ: I realized when I was 16 that I had a knack for science, a passion for fixing things, empathy and a desire to help people, and a thirst to always be challenged and rise above those challenges. As I began to cast around for possible career pathways, many things appealed to me: nuclear physics, advanced mathematics, engineering and design, medicine and surgery. I ultimately decided that surgery, and in particular neurosurgery, would be the career choice that would allow me to use my passion to always be improving myself, and at the same time enter into a field that wouldn’t be “all figured out” by the time I finished and retired 50 plus years later.
Even further within surgery and medicine, I decided that neurosurgery in particular would likely be the biggest challenge of all: the heart is a muscle, the digestive system is a filter, but the brain and spinal cord? That’s just one big black box.
While certainly other specialties and their physiology and pathology are more nuanced than that simplistic 16-year-old’s perspective, I must say I have not been disappointed by my choice.
SSN: It is clear that the healthcare industry is still being impacted since the pandemic, what has been the greatest impact for you within the neuro and spinal industry?
AJ: The COVID-19 pandemic affected people on a medical as well as an economic level. It has d