FACULTY SPOTLIGHT CHRISTIAN BOWERS, M.D., Lives to Save Lives BY ANDREA KOTT, M.P.H.
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he office that Christian Bowers, M.D., occupies is not typical. Instead of the classical collection of medical diplomas, his walls are adorned with college soccer trophies, his photo as an All-American forward and his four children’s artwork. Two framed etchings of the brain and a certificate from the Swedish Neuroscience Institute, whose insignia appears on his down jacket, are all that suggest his medical specialty. But it takes only a query about his choice to pursue a career in medicine instead of soccer for Dr. Bowers to expound on the passion he feels for his work as a neurosurgeon, professor and mentor, and the incomparable satisfaction he finds in performing lifesaving brain surgeries, leading clinical research to improve patient outcomes, and preparing medical students and residents to do the same. Becoming a brain tumor surgeon wasn’t on Dr. Bowers’ radar growing up, first in Southern California, then in Seattle, and Salt Lake City. “I wasn’t that serious of a student,” he quips. He discovered the importance of access to health care in the surprising setting of Chicago’s South Side inner-city neighborhoods where he served two-years as a full-time Spanish-speaking missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints between his freshman and sophomore years of college. “I saw many immigrants without access to even the most basic health care needs, and it shocked me because I had never had to consider a world where that existed. That reality changed me forever and I realized that I really just wanted to help serve people who were in dire need of a skilled physician. My time in the South Side reinforced my calling was to help people as a doctor,” says the assistant professor of neurosurgery and associate program director of the neurosurgery residency program. He particularly wanted to help the underserved, an aspiration he fulfills at NYMC at his weekly neurosurgery clinic for charity care and underserved
patients. “I grew up around affluence and materialism, and it helped me realize that when treating patients with life-threatening neurological conditions, it doesn’t matter what kind of car you drive or where you went to school or any of the superficial things that people spend their whole lives obsessing over.” Dr. Bowers became passionate about neurosurgery at Georgetown University School of Medicine, where he graduated in 2009. He completed neurosurgical training at the University of Utah School of Medicine in Salt Lake City, and later, at the Swedish Neuroscience Institute, in Seattle, where he completed his skull base and brain tumor fellowship in 2017. Neurosurgery fascinates him, but what move him most are his relationships with patients and families. “I love the human vulnerability aspect of neurosurgery and the unbreakable bond that is forged between my patients, their families and myself,” says Dr. Bowers, who is the medical director of neurosurgical oncology and a board-certified neurosurgical attending physician at Westchester Medical Center. “There is an extremely special relationship formed when you perform surgery on someone’s brain.” Since completing his neurosurgical training, Dr. Bowers has built an-already extensive record of accomplishments and publications. At NYMC, he introduced a minimally invasive approach to brain surgeries that uses a thin tube to excise deep-seeded lesions. For his work to develop a telehealth ICU protocol that uses algorithms to remotely track sedation levels of intubated patients, he won the prestigious 2019 Neurosurgery Research and Education Foundation (NREF) “Young Clinical Investigator Award.” This is conferred to only two neurosurgeons a year in the entire country. Moreover, he spearheaded a six-week neurosurgery
summer clinical research elective that has exponentially increased medical student research and clinical participation in neurosurgery. “I want to give students an understanding of what clinical medicine is like while they are still plodding through their pre-clinical years in order to give them some hope for their future, and I want to bolster their resumes by teaching them how to do research and publish.” Meanwhile, he oversees approximately 20 research projects, most focusing on frailty in elderly populations. “We do surgery on people who are 80 and 90 years old, many of whom have multiple medical problems and are on blood thinners,” he explains. “We want to maximize who we can operate on safely using minimally invasive techniques so that we can achieve better outcomes.” Dr. Bowers always wanted to help people and, between his work as a neurosurgeon, teacher and mentor, he gets to do it every day. “I love the difference I get to make in people’s lives, and I genuinely love my job and coming to work every day.” ■
New York Medical College
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