President and CEO
Spine Institute Foundation
Professor, Department of Neurosurgery
Director, Cedars Sinai Spine Center
Dr. J. Patrick Johnson is a world renowned neurosurgeon in Los Angeles known as one of the premier Spinal Neurosurgeons in the field considering his expertise and skills as a surgeon, researcher, innovator and educator. He founded the Spine Institute (SIF) in 2007 and serves as President and CEO of the SIF that is 501c3 non-profit 501c3 education and research entity having trained and supported almost 100 neurosurgeons and orthopedic surgeons and also includes support of any younger students with aspirations in related disciplines by promoting their education as future scientific leaders.
Dr Johnson is a career-long premier spinal neurosurgeon and educator. He has served as Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), University of California, Irvine (UCI), and the University of California, Davis (UC-Davis), since 1992 and currently serves as Professor of Neurosurgery at Cedars Sinai. He has been the Director of the Spine Fellowship program at Cedars Sinai for 22 years and previously started the Fellowship program at UCLA. He has published over 120 manuscripts in leading peer-reviewed medical and surgical journals, written numerous book chapters, and edited 2 books on Spinal Surgery. He is a Diplomate of the American Board of Neurological Surgery, and he is a Fellow of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons, and Fellow of the American College of Surgery, and past Director of the California Association of Neurological Surgeons.
Dr J. Patrick Johnson was born and raised in Great Falls, Montana, the son of the pioneering neurosurgeon Dr Alexander C. Johnson, who was the first neurosurgeon in a five state area that included Montana, Idaho, Wyoming and both Dakotas when he moved his family from Virginia to Montana in 1948 and practiced there for over 40 years.
The younger, Dr J. Patrick Johnson, spent his formative years on the working family cattle ranch in the remote Missouri Breaks of Central Montana and competed in rodeo as a bull rider and also a bareback and bronc rider and graduated from Great Falls High and the mighty Bison. He was a multi-sport high school and collegiate athlete who competed in football, basketball and track. He attended The Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina where he excelled in the demanding military system and obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Chemistry with Honors. He then attended Oregon Health Sciences University in Portland, Oregon and attained both his Master’s and MD degrees. He served a surgical internship and neurosurgical residency training at UCLA and Spinal Fellowship training at the University of Tennessee in Memphis with Dr Kevin Foley as his first Fellow. Dr Johnson also trained at the world renowned National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery at Queen Square and Great Ormond Street Pediatric Hospitals with Professor Alan Crockard in London, England.
He was recruited to Cedars Sinai in 2001 where he developed the largest spine surgery programs in the Western US featuring many of the premier spinal surgeons in Los Angeles. He was instrumental in establishing and Directing the first truly combined Neurosurgery and Orthopedic Spine fellowship training programs at Cedars Sinai producing over 100 US and international fellowship trained spine surgeons with many holding key leadership positions in spinal surgery in the United States and around the world. He was previously Co-Director of the UCLA Spinal Center for 10 years establishing the neurosurgical spine fellowship training program at UCLA with Dr. Donald Becker and Dr. Ulrich Batzdorf.
Dr Johnson is an operating neurosurgeon specializing in exclusively spinal surgery and has 30 years of clinical experience and has performed over 14,000 surgical procedures and extensive expertise in essentially every aspect of spinal surgery including degenerative spinal disorders, traumatic spine and spinal cord injuries, spinal cord tumors and spinal column tumors, spinal infections, congenital spinal anomalies, spinal vascular malformations and spinal deformity disorders.
His research background for the past two decades focusing on artificial disc development and motion preservation of the spinal column conducting the initial FDA clinical trials for artificial disc devices on the West Coast beginning in 2002
https://thejns.org/spine/view/journals/j-neurosurg-spine/1/2/article-p143.xml ;Surg Neurol Int. 2020 Oct 2;11:322. doi: 10.25259/SNI_587_2020. eCollection 2020..
He has been involved numerous other clinical outcome studies, new product development, and as a corporate consultant for research and development of new technologies including computer guided surgical procedures and now leading the development of robotic spinal surgery
World Neurosurg. 2022 Aug 6:S1878-8750(22)01066-X. doi: 10.1016/j.wneu.2022.07.116. Online ahead of print. PMID: 35944855 ; Cureus. 2021 Oct 31;13(10):e19165. doi: 10.7759/cureus.19165. eCollection 2021 Oct.PMID: 34873508
He has also been a pioneer developing endoscopic and minimally invasive surgical and motion preservation procedures particularly for thoracic disc disease.
He has been involved in clinical research involving the biological repair of spinal cord diseases including ALS recently published in Nature Medicine and injuries with stem cell repair and funded by California Institute of Regenerative Medicine (CIRM). He was instrumental in establishing the basic science stem cell research and biomechanics laboratories at the Cedars Sinai Spine Center with a renowned international research faculty.
He has also served on the editorial review boards of the Journal of Neurosurgery, World Journal of Surgery, Neurosurgical Focus, Surgical Neurology and The Spine Journal. In addition, Dr. Johnson lectures widely and frequently at national and international meetings on essentially all aspects of spinal disorders and emerging technologies.
See Dr Johnson’s full curriculum Vitae >>>
He is an active member in many professional organizations including:
The Congress of Neurological Surgeons (CNS)
American Association of Neurological Surgeons (AANS)
American College of Surgeons (ACS)
California Association of Neurosurgeons (CANS)
North American Spine Society (NASS)
American Medical Association (AMA)
Los Angeles County Medical Association (LACMA)
American Association of Spine Physicians
Western Neurosurgical Society (WNS)
Scoliosis Research Society (SRS).
His personal interests include a third generation family ranching business in Montana and Co-founder of JS Rodeo Company that conducts PRCA rodeo events across the United States.
Serving as a volunteer on the Justin Boots Sports Medicine program providing consultation for professional rodeo athletes across the country.
Serving as an NFL UNC (Unaffiliated Neurotrauma Consultant) as a sidelines concussion and neurological specialist during NFL games.
Served as a volunteer Neurosurgeon for injured soldiers and personnel at the US Army Hospital in Landstuhl, Germany during the Iraq-Afghanistan War.
Global outreach through affiliations with the Red Cross, Doctors without Borders, Health Volunteers Overseas, Wounded Warriors, Foundation for International Education of Neurosurgery (FIENS) among others educating Neurosurgeons and Orthopedic surgeons in many locations in Southeast Asia, Central and South America, Eastern and Central Europe over the past 30 years.