One of the first duties of a newly elected AANS president is setting the tone for the coming year and for the Annual Meeting that will serve as the presidency’s capstone. Roberto C. Heros, MD, chose “Cultural Connections: Bringing Global Perspective to Neurosurgery&qyot; as the 71st Annual Meeting theme, drawing upon his Latin American roots, as well as his abiding interest in advancing neurosurgery throughout the world and particularly in developing countries.
Born and raised in Cuba, Dr. Heros remembers wanting to be a neurosurgeon from the age of nine, inspired by an uncle who was a neurosurgeon. His ambition seemed to come to an end when Fidel Castro came to power. “I was involved in the Bay of Pigs as a paratrooper platoon commander,” he said. “Afterward, the two years I spent in prison gave me a lot to think about; I was locked up, falling behind in my studies, but fortunately I was able to read a fair amount about history and work on my English.”
He came to the United States as part of President Kennedy’s exchange of prisoners for food and medicine. “At that point, my dream seemed unrealistic,” Dr. Heros said. “Not having gone to college, what were my chances of becoming first a doctor, then a neurosurgeon?”
Resourceful and Hardworking
Not ready to abandon his childhood dream, Dr. Heros continued on an unconventional route to becoming a neurosurgeon. “I needed a job, and just then a lot of Cubans needed insurance,” he remembered. So… “I called an insurance company and said I was an insurance salesman.” He sold insurance for a year, saving enough to attend college for one year and a half and meet his pre-med course requirements. He then entered medical school at the University of Tennessee, graduating first in his class in 1968. He served his surgical internship and neurosurgical residency at Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School.
Reflecting on his 34-year career, Dr. Heros remarked, “I have loved every minute of it, including my internship and residency.” He added with a laugh, “Maybe it’s selective memory.”
He cited the intellectual challenges and the opportunities to help patients and teach residents as the high points of the profession. “It is a privilege to be a neurosurgeon,” he said. “And there is nothing better than to take care of a patient and be able to tell the family that there will be a full recovery.”
Along the way to becoming “one of the top five vascular surgeons in the county,” in the words of William Brody, the Academic Health Center provost at the University of Minnesota where Dr. Heros once served as the chair of neurosurgery, he authored or co-authored more than 200 scientific journal articles and book chapters, as well as four textbooks on topics including intracranial aneurysms, carotid endarterectomy, cerebral arteriovenous malformations, and skull base and brainstem tumors.
He has been a visiting professor at nearly 40 universities in the United States and abroad, and he is a member of numerous professional societies, among them the World Federation of Neurosurgical Societies, for which he is founding chair of the Neurovascular Committee, and the Academy of Neurological Surgeons, of which he is past president. Dr. Heros also holds honorary memberships in a number of neurosurgical societies abroad, particularly in Latin America.
Committed to Neurosurgery at Home and Abroad
One of the aspects that attracted him to the University of Miami, where he currently serves as professor and co-chair of neurosurgery, was the opportunity to create the International Health Center there, which facilitates bringing patients to the United States for treatment and providing educational opportunities for physicians from abroad. Dr. Heros estimates that 20 percent of his patients come from Latin America.
His commitment to international patients and the neurosurgeons who treat them doesn’t end there. “Every day one or two of my Latin American colleagues e-mails MRIs or angiograms to me,” he said. “It feels good to be able to share immediate advice with them.”
Currently practicing in Miami, an area where doctors are known to pay some of the highest rates in the United States for professional liability insurance, Dr. Heros has felt the heat of the crisis. “This issue is just one of many that would benefit from the unification of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons and the Congress of Neurological Surgeons,” he said. “Unification is logical, and the time is right for a truly equal merger that will foster neurosurgery’s objective of speaking with one voice.”
A former vice president of the CNS, Dr. Heros said, “I loved my time with the Congress; it was my initial experience with organized neurosurgery. Whatever unification looks like, one thing that must be preserved is access to leadership for young neurosurgeons.” He concluded, “It is the responsibility of each of us to give back to the profession in valid ways, whether at the local, state, or national level.”