JOSEPH T. MCFADDEN, native to Oxford, MS, holds a BS degree from the University of Mississippi and an MD degree from the University of Virginia where he completed his neurosurgery residency in 1951. He served as a medical officer in the US Navy during World War II. During the Korean War he was called out of an established neurosurgical practice to active duty from the reserves and served as chief of neurosurgery at Great Lakes USN Hospital.
He was certified by the American Board of Neurological Surgery in 1954. He is a member of the Society of Neurological Surgeons, The American Association of Neurological Surgeons, and The Congress of Neurological Surgeons, The Southern Neurosurgical Society, and the American College of Surgeons.
His publications on metal implants led to his representing neurosurgery at the American Society of Testing and Materials (ASTM) and International Standards Organization (ISO), to his founding of the Drugs and Devices committees of the AANS and the CNS, and to a position on the advisory panel to the FDA. Through these efforts manufacturers and surgeons met to establish voluntary consensus standards for not only materials but also for device performance. Thus, erroneous practices were removed from neurosurgery, among them the use of silver clips (Cushing and Olivecrona), no doubt the cause of unrecognized harm to thousands of patients. New standards eliminated stainless steel, in any of its many forms, from the list of implantable materials in and around the nervous system. MP35N was introduced as the ideal material for permanently implanted self-closing aneurysm clips, and this non-ferromagnetic material predated the MRI era by many years.
He introduced to neurosurgery, in 1969, with the help of George Kees,. who manufactured the Mayfield clip and its modifications, the crossed action coiled spring aneurysm clip. It quickly became and remains the prototype largely used worldwide. The salient features of the Mayfield and Scoville clips were combined in this mechanism. Imitations appeared almost immediately and continue to appear, among them, the Sugita, the Yasargil, the Sundt, and the Spetzler clips.
In the early 1970’s he founded the Department of Neurosurgery in Eastern Virginia Medical School, retiring in 1985 as Emeritus Chairman and Professor of Neurosurgery.
In retirement he continues development, with the Synergetics Corporation, of the first and only head rest offering three dimensional global reach and limitless (analog) positioning along with an entirely new system of head clamping and head holding. He has written and published HERMES’ VIPER (Novel) 2000, 2009; THE WAFER (Novel) 2002, 2009; FULTON’S MONKEY (Short Stories) 2002, 2009); A HOOKER IN THE CHOIR (Novel) 2009; BURNT OFFERING (Novel) 2009; LIFE IN THE DEADLY WORLD OF MEDICINE (non fiction) 2009; and is working on another novel, THE DNA ROSE.
