Phanor L. Perot Jr.: South Carolina’s father of academic neurosurgery

Abstract

Phanor Leonidas Perot Jr., MD, PhD (1928–2011), was a gifted educator and pioneer of academic neurosurgery in South Carolina. As neurosurgical resident and then as a junior faculty member at the Montreal Neurological Institute, he advanced understandings of both epilepsy and spinal cord injury under Wilder Penfield, William Cone, and Theodore Rasmussen. In 1968, he moved to Charleston to lead neurosurgery. From his time spent with master physicians such as Isidor Ravdin and Wilder Penfield, Perot himself became “the ultimate teacher." His research spanned the fields of epilepsy to torticollis to spinal trauma, focusing the most on the basic pathophysiology of spinal cord damage elucidated through somatosensory evoked potentials. His research was distinguished by generous grant funding. By the time he stepped down as chairman in 1997, the division of neurosurgery had become a department and he had served as president of the American Academy of Neurological Surgery and the Society of Neurological Surgeons. Perot taught prolifically at the bedside, and considered the residency program at the Medical University of South Carolina his greatest achievement. Although Dr. Perot never fully retired, he also enjoyed active hobbies of fly-fishing, traveling, and hunting, until his death on February 2, 2011. He influenced many and earned his role in history as the father of academic neurosurgery in South Carolina.