Jon White, M.D.

Biography

For Jonathan White, M.D., the road to neurosurgery started with an interest in psychology. Fascinated by how the mind works, he majored in psychology at the University of New Mexico, then decided to go to medical school to study psychiatry. In his third year as a medical student, he did a rotation in neurosurgery and was, he says, hooked, finding it a field in which one is “often able to make a difference in people’s lives by performing some surgery on them that alters their function and helps restore them. That is really quite unique and rewarding.”

Dr. White trained in neurosurgery at UT Southwestern and immediately joined the faculty, where he is a Professor in both the Neurosurgery and Radiology (Neuroradiology) Departments and holds the Birsner Family Professorship in Neurological Surgery. He specializes in blood-vessel problems occurring in the brain, such as brain aneurysms, arteriovenous malformations (AVMs), and stroke and mini-stroke. He also cares for patients with normal-pressure hydrocephalus, chronic facial pain, and other cranial nerve compression syndromes.

In addition to his medical role at UT Southwestern, Dr. White has been an administrative leader and a member of numerous hospital committees, assisting in emergency department planning, operating-room leadership, and stroke-treatment planning.

Research has also been an important part of Dr. White’s career. Some of his studies evaluate how post-operative neurosurgical patients do over time.

“We are constantly refining who's the right candidate for which procedure,” he says. “Are we actually beating the natural history of the disorder with surgery, or is it better just to leave  it alone?” Through such research, for example, surgeons have learned that some AVMs are less dangerous than they seem and are best left untreated. Another group of research projects involves testing and refining devices in the endovascular field. “We’ve got smaller catheters, softer balloons, softer coils, and coils that detach more quickly,” he says. ”Because UT Southwestern treats so many patients with endovascular techniques, we participate in the development and testing of these devices.” 

A leader in his field, Dr. White is Past President of the Rocky Mountain Neurosurgical Society and a member of the Cerebrovascular Section Executive Committee of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons. He was included in D Magazine's Best Doctors list for 2018, 2021, and 2022.

Dr. White has delivered lectures to fellow neurosurgeons at Yale University, the European Society of Minimally Invasive Neurological Therapy, and the Society of Neurointerventional Surgery. He serves as a peer reviewer for the prestigious journals Neurosurgery and Journal of Neurosurgery and has published numerous book chapters and peer-reviewed articles on topics including endovascular coiling, aneurysm, stroke, and AVM.