Dr. Bydon currently is a neurosurgeon at Rochester, Minn.-based Mayo Clinic and medical director of the Mayo Clinic Neurosurgical Registry. While at Mayo, he has pioneered advancements in neurosurgical care, specializing in minimally invasive and robotic approaches to complex spinal conditions.
He began the minimally invasive spine program at Mayo in 2015 and established one of the nation’s first robotic spine programs in any academic department in 2018. Dr. Bydon also is at the forefront of AI in healthcare, having led first-in-human clinical trials for the regenerative treatment of spinal cord injury.
Dr. Bydon spoke with Becker’s about his plans for UChicago’s neurological surgery program and the advancements he is keeping an eye on for the next few years of spine surgery.
Note: Responses have been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Question: What are your plans for UChicago’s neurological surgery program?
Dr. Mohamad Bydon: “Aggressive growth”: That is the main objective. The department today is great. There are 11 full-time faculty members, four of whom are NIH funded, and we want to keep these leading programs. Several of the subspecialties are top notch. What we want to do is continue to advance the current great work being done and also build upon that. Part of that is clinical growth, part of that is matching the vision of the institution, and obviously providing for our community, our patients who seek us. Those would be major initiatives. Obviously clinical growth would be really important. Also, academic and research growth for our mission.
Q: What challenges do you anticipate?
MB: In the surgical community overall in Chicago, everyone is very supportive, and folks at UChicago have also been very supportive. Chicago is one of the great cities of the country and has excellent programs. UChicago is really one of the greatest universities and has such a rich and storied history. There will always be both opportunities and challenges when navigating new issues that arise. I think the part that’s most reassuring is how supportive and positive the environment has been.
Q: How will you use your experiences at Mayo to guide you in this new role?
MB: Mayo is obviously a great institution and I was here for many years and learned so much and had a very positive and symbiotic relationship with the institution. There are many different parts of the institution that I got to learn. Obviously clinical practice, research, educational mission, development, contracting, international work, surgical outcomes. All of those areas I’ve gotten to learn in an intricate way. One of the appealing things about my current position is all of those roles impact and influence it. I think having had strong backgrounds in those areas, I can leverage those learnings at UChicago. I would also emphasize that as I met with similar teams at UChicago, I was so impressed with their depth of work in each of those areas. One of the things I am most looking forward to is taking the things I’ve learned and experienced and learning how they’re done at UChicago.
Q: What advancements in the field are you keeping an eye on right now?
MB: Neurosurgery is changing a lot right now, and there is a lot more outpatient care than there used to be. Robotics has become a bigger piece of spinal neurosurgery. There are more and more endoscopic approaches. The way that we treat cases is also radically changing. There’s obviously really important divisions within neurology, but there’s a lot of advancements happening in neuro-oncology, functional and brain machine interfaces, and those things are really important and will have a significant impact for patients.
There’s definitely a transition to outpatient care happening and we see more and more cases like that. There are cases where patients used to spend four to five days in the hospital, and now they’re going home the same day. That’s a critical component. Nationally, there’s a focus on AI, and that will have an impact on medical specialties and on neurosurgery as well.
Q: Is there anything else you would like to expand on?
MB: The one thing I would say is how impressive the people at UChicago are. I’ve been fortunate to have wonderful colleagues at Mayo, Johns Hopkins and Yale. When I went to UChicago, I got to meet some of the most impressive people I’ve ever met. Im really honored to be working alongside them.
