Dr. Rafael De la Garza Ramos is a spine surgeon, Director of Spine Research, and Assistant Professor of Neurological Surgery at Montefiore Medical Center, Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City. He received his medical degree from the Monterrey Institute of Technology in 2013, graduating with honors. He then completed a three-year research fellowship at the Johns Hopkins Department of Neurosurgery, receiving the A. Earl Walker Outstanding International Fellow Award in 2015 in recognition of his contributions to the advancement of neurological sciences. He completed his residency training in neurological surgery at Montefiore Medical Center, Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City, and a fellowship in Complex Spine Surgery at Brown University. His clinical interest is in spine oncology and complex reconstruction, including management of primary and metastatic tumors of the spine, spinal deformity, and salvage procedures. His research focuses on spine oncology, particularly on the impact of frailty on surgical outcomes, adverse event prediction, biomechanics of spinal reconstruction in cancer patients, and cancer health disparities.
Dr. Mitchell S. Fourman is an attending physician and Assistant Professor of Orthopedic Surgery at Montefiore-Einstein. He earned his Bachelor of Science at Stony Brook University in 2008. He attended the University of Cambridge to earn a Master of Philosophy in Sociology in 2009 before completing his Doctor of Medicine with Distinction in Research and the Humanities in 2014 at Stony Brook University. He pursued his postdoctoral training at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, completing an internship in general surgery in 2015 followed by a residency in orthopedic surgery in 2020. He then went on to complete a clinical fellowship in Orthopedic Oncology at Harvard in 2021 followed by a clinical fellowship in Adult Spine and Scoliosis Surgery at the Hospital for Special Surgery in 2022 under Drs. Todd Albert, Han Jo Kim, and Sheeraz Qureshi. His research focuses include the impact of socioeconomic disparities on surgical outcomes, the management of metastatic spine disease, the implementation of value-based orthopedic care, and the use of near-infrared fluorescence imaging to identify areas of spinal nerve compression. He also studies multiple aspects of adult spinal deformity in collaboration with the International Spine Study Group (ISSG). He has won several awards for his research, including the Philip D. Wilson Award for Excellence in Orthopedic Surgery Research while a fellow at the Hospital for Special Surgery.
Dr. Reza Yassari earned his medical degree from the Vienna School of Medicine in Austria and a Master of Science in Experimental Pathology from the University of Chicago. He completed his residency in Neurosurgery at the University of Chicago Medical Center and was a fellow at the MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics. Subsequently, he was an instructor at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Spinal Oncology and Reconstructive and Complex Spine with the Dept. of Neurosurgery. Dr. Reza Yassari specializes in the treatment of complex degenerative, traumatic, and neoplastic spine diseases, including intrinsic extradural, intradural, and intramedullary spinal cord tumors as well as metastatic spine tumors. Dr. Yassari’s clinical focus is on spinal oncology in collaboration with the Montefiore Einstein Center for Cancer Care and the Department of Radiation Oncology. He combines his training in minimally invasive surgery and spinal oncology with the existing infrastructure for advanced intraoperative image guidance technology at Montefiore Medical Center to offer innovative, cutting-edge surgical treatment options to patients with all aspects of spine pathologies, in particular metastatic spine disease.
