Byron Branch, MD - Carolina Neurosurgery & Spine Associates

Byron Branch, MD, is a graduate of Wake Forest University School of Medicine and is a North Carolina native. He completed his neurosurgical residency, as well as a spine surgery fellowship at the University of Texas Health Science Center San Antonio. His special interests include minimally invasive spine surgery, disc disease, degenerative spine disease, artificial disc replacement, spinal trauma, spinal fusion, and osteoporotic compression fractures. During college, graduate school and medical school he also worked as an EMT and firefighter, and participated in medical missionary trips to Guatemala, Honduras and Nigeria.
Learn more at www.cnsa.com or call 800-344-6716.
Video transcription:
My name is Byron Branch. I grew up in North Carolina, actually just up the street in Winston-Salem, and I completed my medical training and MD degree at Wake Forest University there in Winston-Salem. After which, I went and completed my residency training and fellowship training in spinal neurosurgery at the University of Texas in San Antonio.
What Can Patients Expect At Their First Visit With You?
We will sit down together, I'll listen to what they have to say, and then we will go through their problem, look at their films and come up with a unique treatment plan that's individualized for them, unique to their specific problem.
That plan for me consists of what is the least invasive way that we can fix their problem, and often times that means no surgery. Physical therapy, injections, other non-invasive treatment modalities, we'll try first before getting to the point of even discussing surgery. So that's not always the first thing that we go to.
For those who do need surgery, I think that the type of surgery that I focus on, this minimally invasive surgery of the spine and the neck, provides certain advantages: smaller incisions, less painful incisions, a quicker recovery time, and often less stress on the body during the surgical operation.
Why Did You Choose To Become A Neurosurgeon?
This is kind of unusual in the field of neurosurgery, I'm actually a third-generation neurosurgeon. Both my father and grandfather were neurosurgeons. For the longest time, I was not going to be a neurosurgeon, just because of seeing how late Dad would get home, and being gone on the weekends.
Actually, for a while I wanted to be a fireman and a paramedic, and I did that for about 10 years on a part-time job basis. I guess, ultimately, my Dad and my Grandfather were right when they told me that it was in my genes. Because once I spent some time with the neurosurgical service at Wake Forest, during my medical school, I was hooked.
And here I am today.