Personal Statement

Back and neck pain are the second most common reasons people seek medical advice, but the care has been very fragmented. It’s long been my passion to bring together all the many disciplines required to provide comprehensive diagnosis, treatment, and care for back and neck disorders. Surgical intervention is really just a small part of what we do – but when surgery is required we always strive for the least invasive, most effective option to get our patients back to enjoying their lives.

Biography

Roger Härtl, M.D., is the Hansen-MacDonald Professor of Neurological Surgery and Director of Spinal Surgery at the Weill Cornell Medicine Brain and Spine Center in New York, as well as the co-director of NewYork-Presbyterian Och Spine. He is also the founder and director of the Weill Cornell Medicine Center for Comprehensive Spine Care as well as Weill Cornell Medicine's Global Neurosurgery Initiative in Tanzania (for which he was named AANS Humanitarian of the Year for 2022). He also serves as the official neurosurgeon for the New York Giants Football Team.

Dr. Härtl's clinical interest focuses on simple and complex spine surgery for degenerative conditions, tumors and trauma as well as biological approaches for disc repair and regeneration. He is a world-renowned pioneer and leader in minimally invasive spinal surgery and computer-assisted spinal navigation surgery. He is actively involved in improving neurosurgical care in developing countries as the leader of Weill Cornell's Global Health Neurosurgery Initiative in Tanzania.

In order to achieve the very best in patient outcomes, Dr. Härtl's practice emphasizes an interdisciplinary approach to disease processes and he works very closely with other specialists such as neurologists, pain specialists, sports medicine doctors and physical therapists. His patients come from all over the globe and include many physicians, surgeons and even other neurological and spine surgeons. He has been repeatedly named to the lists of New York Super Doctors, America's Top Surgeons, and America's Best Doctors, and has been included on the list of New York’s Best Doctors in New York magazine. He has authored more than 200 scholarly articles in peer-reviewed journals and is the editor of two books on minimally invasive spinal surgery and biological disc repair and regeneration.

Dr. Härtl has provided commentary for numerous television shows on ABC, NBC, and CBS in addition to national radio shows. His expertise has been sought through interviews in the New York Times, The New York Post, The New York Daily News, and other media outlets. One of his patients, boxer Danny Jacobs, was recently featured in a TV ad from NewYork-Presbyterian.

TRAINING Dr. Härtl received his M.D. from the Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich, Germany. In 1994 Dr. Härtl came to the Weill Cornell Medical College as a post-doctoral research fellow in the Department of Surgery and the Brain Trauma Foundation to pursue research in traumatic brain and spinal cord injury. He completed another fellowship in neurocritical care at the Charite Hospital of the Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany, followed by a surgical internship and residency at Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He completed his neurosurgery residency at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, after which he pursued specialized training in complex spine surgery at the Barrow's Neurological Institute in Phoenix under Dr. Volker Sonntag. In 2004 Dr. Härtl returned to re-join the Department of Neurosurgery at Weill Cornell Medical College.

RESEARCH Dr. Härtl's scientific interest focuses on clinical and basic science research surrounding innovative and less invasive surgical and biological treatment strategies for degenerative diseases of the spine. Together with the Biomedical Engineering Department at Cornell he is working on tissue-engineering techniques for the repair and regeneration of degenerated spinal discs, the most common cause of back and neck pain. Dr. Härtl has lectured and published extensively on the surgical treatment of spinal disorders, and neurotrauma. He is a leader in the application of evidence-based medicine to neurosurgery and worked with the Brain Trauma Foundation in New York on the development of treatment guidelines for the medical and surgical management of head injury that are now used worldwide.