Andrea Fontanella

Dr. Andrea Fontanella is a neurosurgeon specialist at the Casa di Cura La Madonnina Clinic and the Head of the Endoscopic Microsurgical Spine Surgery Department at the Casa di Cura Città di Parma Clinic.

After graduating in 1983 from the Faculty of Medicine and Surgery of the University of Parma, he specialized in neurosurgery at the University of Milan in 1988.

From 1980 to 1983, he attended the Neurosurgery Department of the Ospedali Riuniti di Parma Hospital as a student, and from 1983 to 1988 he was a doctor in the same department.

From 1994 he was a neurosurgeon at the Hesperia Hospital in Modena and during the same period he visited the departments of neurosurgery and spinal surgery in different countries of the world: Germany, the United States, Switzerland and France.

Since 1996 he has been the Italian representative of the I.S.M.I.S.S. (International Society for Minimally Invasive Spine Surgery), which is located in the United States, and in 1998 he collaborated with the University of Zurich.

Dr. Fontanella is a member of numerous international societies for spine surgery:

• Swiss Institute of Spine Diseases,
• International Society of Intradiscal Therapy,
• Groupe International D’Etude des Approaches Intervertbrales du Rachis,
• International Society of Neurosurgical Instrument Inventors,
• European Society for Spine Surgery,
• North American Society for Spine Surgery,
• International Society for Minimal Intervention in Spinal Surgery,
• Society for Minimally Invasive Spine Surgery.

In addition to these activities, Dr. Fontanella adds work as an author, with nearly 100 publications in leading national and international journals, and as a speaker at various world congresses.

His main area of interest is neurosurgery of the spine, with special attention paid to minimally invasive surgery of the spine (endoscopic microsurgery) and the development of surgical techniques, as well as improving surgical instruments.

To date, he has performed about 12,000 surgeries as the first surgeon.