ABOUT
Dr. Maxwell Boakye is Professor and Chief of Spinal Neurosurgery and Director of Quality Improvement and Clinical Director of Kentucky Spinal Cord Injury Center at the Department of Neurosurgery, University of Louisville. He graduated with the highest honors with a double major in mathematics and physics at Rutgers University in 1989 and completed medical training at Weill Cornell School of Medicine, NY, NY in 1995. During medical school, he spent two years at the National Institutes of health as a Howard-Hughes National Institutes Research Scholar. He completed neurosurgical training at SUNY-Upstate Syracuse in 2002 and fellowships in Complex spinal surgery at Emory University, Atlanta, GA, and Spinal Oncology at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, NY, NY in 2003. He was Assistant professor of Neurosurgery at Stanford University from 2003-2010, Associate Professor and Chief of Spinal Neurosurgery at the University of Louisville in 2011, and became Tenured Professor of Neurosurgery at the University of Louisville in 2021. He has been the Clinical Director of the Kentucky Spinal cord injury center since 2013 and has been Director of Quality Improvement in the Department of neurosurgery at the University of Louisville since 2020.
A clinician-scientist, he devotes about half of his time to outcomes and comparative effectiveness research, and spinal cord injury research. He also directs the University of Louisville spine fellowship. His spinal cord injury research focuses on discovering innovative treatments for paralysis.
Dr. Boakye has published over 200 peer-reviewed scientific manuscripts, book chapters, and abstracts and coedited one spinal cord injury textbook. He leads the University of Louisville Department of Neurosurgery surgical innovation forum that brings together surgeons, engineers, and scientists for bimonthly innovation and idea development forum meetings.
He has also been interested in Global neurosurgery and assisting with the development of Neurosurgery in Ghana.
Dr. Boakye specializes in general neurosurgery and complex spinal neurosurgery, spinal radiosurgery, and minimally invasive spinal surgery, including endoscopic lumbar discectomies. He runs the Department of Neurosurgery outcomes research program and spinal cord research lab, including the porcine spinal cord injury research program. Dr. Boakye is the lead neurosurgeon for the epidural stimulation research program at the University of Louisville.
We are located at 2401 Terra Crossing Boulevard, Suite 350, Louisville, Kentucky, and we service the 100 miles radius from where we are, but we are also sought out by patients from other states who need quality spine neurosurgery they can’t find in their own locality. What sets us apart since we started in 2011 is our world-class surgical expertise which we apply in a clean, caring environment. We prefer a multidisciplinary and evidence-based approach to our patient care supported by an advanced outcomes research program. We work in tandem with other specialists in physiatry, neurology, and pain management because spinal neurosurgery is a complex process requiring a whole-picture approach. We make use of shared expertise and knowledge and also the latest research findings in various medical fields to create singular and individualized treatment plans. We believe each patient is unique and their needs should be approached with a personal touch coupled with medical efficacy.