Miami neurosurgeon still aims to cure paralysis, but he’s putting down the scalpel
As a renowned neurosurgeon whose patients have included the homeless and the children of world leaders, Barth A. Green has dedicated his 46-year medical career to finding a cure for paralysis and, later, to deploying rapid medical responses to major disasters in the Western Hemisphere.
As a semi-retiree who performed his final surgery on Friday — but who will continue to see patients, and to teach and mentor students and doctors at the University of Miami’s Miller School of Medicine and Jackson Memorial Hospital — Green said he intends to follow the same humanitarian instincts that have shaped an unparalleled career in medicine.
“Every week, there’s a new opportunity to help people,” said Green, 76, who has performed about 15,000 operations over his career and finished his final surgeries at Jackson Memorial Hospital on Friday morning.
Afterwards, family, colleagues and students gathered to celebrate Green, presenting him with a plaque and renaming the surgeon’s lounge at Miami’s Jackson Memorial Hospital in his honor. They praised Green’s achievements in medicine and hailed him as one of a kind.
“He’s always been there for people,” said Don Steigman, chief operating officer for Jackson Health System, which runs Jackson Memorial. “He’s not only a friend to us. He’s a humanitarian.”
Allan Levi, a neurosurgeon and chairman of neurological surgery for the University of Miami Health System, noted that Green has built one of the preeminent neurosurgical departments in the country while teaching generations of medical residents and fellows during his four decades in Miami.
Green has developed an international reputation, Levi said, but never let that go to his head.
“I remember when he had his cardiac surgery, like 10 or 12 years ago,” Levi said, “and he literally got out of the hospital in two days, which in itself is unbelievable, but he was literally doing rounds.”
Green’s life work has been medicine, specifically neurosurgery with a focus on the spine. But his calling, Green said, has always been social justice. That is what Green said has motivated him since arriving in Miami from Chicago with his wife, Kathy, in 1975 after completing his neurosurgery residency at Northwestern Memorial Hospital.
“The thing I’m most proud of is the fact that when I do come home I can tell people I work in a very unique place where everybody is treated the same,” he said, “whether they are British royalty or whether they are illegally in this country or living under a bridge. And that’s something that keeps me going every day: social justice.”
Lifelong quest to cure paralysis
After meeting paraplegic military veterans volunteering at a hospital during his medical school years, Green said he committed himself to curing paralysis.
“It gave me my impetus to say my career is going to focus on getting rid of those wheelchairs,” said Green, who served 37 years in the U.S. Army Reserve Medical Corps, where he reached the rank of Lt. Colonel.
In 1985, Green seized on another chance to follow through on his goal, partnering with NFL Hall of Fame linebacker and Miami Dolphins icon Nick Buoniconti, and founding The Miami Project to Cure Paralysis after Buoniconti’s son, Marc, suffered a spinal cord injury in a college football game. The Miami Project, one of the first such centers in the nation, has grown into an international team of more than 175 scientists, researchers, clinicians and others committed to finding a cure for paralysis.
After an earthquake killed hundreds of thousands in Haiti in January 2010, Green was already there, having co-founded a nonprofit, Project Medishare, in 1994 to help people in isolated parts of Haiti. Green and Project Medishare were key to bringing medical help, opening one of the country’s only critical care hospitals after Haiti’s worst natural disaster in more than a century.
Project Medishare helping people across the globe
Green noted that Project Medishare is still in the Bahamas helping residents recover from the damage caused by Hurricane Dorian in 2019, and the group is shipping medical supplies to areas of need in Guatemala, Ecuador, Peru and India, where COVID-19 cases and deaths have been surging.
Through his work around the globe, Green has recruited some of the country’s top doctors to UM and South Florida, and enlisted them in the cause of improving the lives of others.
In the aftermath of the 2010 Haiti earthquake, Henri Ford was a pediatric surgeon and chief of surgery at Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles. Ford had never met Green but he wanted to help bring medical relief to his native Haiti.
After trying unsuccessfully to find a flight to the ravaged country, Ford heard from a friend that he should reach out to Green, who put the eager surgeon on the next charter plane to the island.
“That was really the beginning of this very, very long association,” said Ford, who in 2018 was named dean of UM’s Miller School of Medicine. The medical trip became a mission for Ford.
“I worked two grueling weeks there, and by the time he was set to return, I realized I couldn’t be a one-and-done,” he said. “I needed to figure out a way to integrate myself into the reconstruction.”
When Ford reached out again to Green, the neurosurgeon replied: “We need you.” Two weeks later, Ford was staying at Green’s home, preparing to fly to Haiti again.
From then on, Ford was a regular member on Green’s trips. They have collaborated on projects to rebuild Haiti’s healthcare infrastructure, build a trauma center on the island and “elevate the capacity of the surgeons,” Ford said.
“All the great stuff that he’s doing here in terms of spine surgery, the Miami Project [to Cure Paralysis] and educating the next generation of talented neurosurgeons, he’s doing an even greater service to the people in Haiti,” Ford said. “That’s why he means so much to me. He’s a tremendous role model. He’s an exemplary humanitarian, and we’re fortunate to have him here.”
Through all of his medical missions and a few misadventures — Green said he’s been detained by the KGB in Russia, and kidnapped by the Medellin Cartel in Colombia — the globetrotting neurosurgeon has laid down deep roots in Miami.
Hired by the University of Miami in 1975, Green was charged with building the spinal cord injury programs at the facilities of UM’s medical partners, Jackson Memorial and the Miami VA Medical Center. He co-founded The Miami Project a decade later.
As he spoke to a roomful of family and friends on Friday, Green stood at the front and cradled his youngest grandchild, who was born at Jackson Memorial eight weeks ago. Swaying gently as he held the infant, Green extolled the power of caring for patients as though they were family.
It is one of the principles that have guided Green’s life and career, he said. Green added that he was humbled by the attention his life’s work has received and grateful for a family and home that keep him grounded.
“I’m not sure that I’ve changed the world but I like to treat patients like family,” he said. “I think that’s the most important thing. The spirituality of medicine is being lost in a lot of places.
“People care about income and finances and insurance, and we’ve got to reconnect to the humanity of medicine. ... That’s the model I would like the next generation of physicians to carry, that patients are not just our responsibility. They’re our family.”
This story was originally published May 28, 2021 at 6:44 PM.
