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Michael Lawton, MD

Michael T. Lawton, MD, is the President and CEO of Barrow Neurological
Institute and the Chair of the Department of Neurosurgery. He is board
certified by the American Board of Neurological Surgery.
Dr. Lawton’s neurosurgical expertise includes cerebrovascular disorders
(aneurysms, arteriovenous malformations, cavernous malformations, and
stroke) and skull base tumors. He has experience in treating more than
5,200 brain aneurysms, 990 AVMs, and 1,000 cavernous malformations,
including more than 300 in the brain stem and other highly delicate areas
of the brain. He is a member of the American Association of Neurological
Surgeons, Congress of Neurological Surgeons, Society of Neurological
Surgeons, American Academy of Neurological Surgery, and World Acade-
my of Neurological Surgery.

Dr. Lawton received his medical degree from Johns Hopkins University
School of Medicine and bachelor’s degree in biomedical engineering from
Brown University. He completed his neurosurgery residency at Barrow,
where he also completed a fellowship in cerebrovascular and skull base
surgery. After joining the faculty at University of California, San Francisco,
he later completed a fellowship in endovascular surgery there.

Dr. Lawton’s research studies the formation, underlying genetics, and
rupture of brain AVMs, as well as the hemodynamics, rupture, and com-
putational modeling of brain aneurysms. His clinical research studies the
anatomy of microsurgical approaches and clinical outcomes of microsur-
gery for aneurysms, AVMs, and bypass surgery. He is the principal inves-
tigator for the Brain Vascular Malformation Consortium, an NIH-funded
multicenter group studying the genetics and clinical course of rare vascu-
lar diseases of the brain. He has published more than 770 peer-reviewed
articles, six single-author textbooks, and more than 100 book chapters.

Knowing neurosurgical education must continue during the pandemic,
Dr. Lawton launched Seven Series, a collection of narrated case studies
with histories, imaging studies, and illustrations from the Barrow Neurosci-
ence Publications animation studio. He also initiated Barrow Base Camp,
a series of videos capturing resident teaching rounds to help neurosur-
geons sharpen their skills.

Presentation(s):

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