BNI History and Development

The Barrow Neurological Institute was founded in 1961 by John Green, a neurosurgeon formerly with the Illinois Neuropsychiatric Institute in Chicago, with financial support from Charles Barrow, a wealthy man. John Green came to Phoenix, Arizona, because he suffered from rheumatism, liked the dry, warm climate of Phoenix, and saw a lack of neurosurgical specialties in the area. Charles Barrow, a wealthy man, sponsored him because Charles Barrow's wife had a recurrent glioma that was prolonged by John Green's life-saving treatment for 17 years. Charles Barrow was close to the Sisters of Mercy, owners of St. Joseph's Hospital. With funding from Charles Barrow and the NIH, and a site grant from Sisters of Mercy, John Green established the Barrow Neurological Institute (BNI) at St. Joseph's Hospital.

Robert F. Spetzler took over the position of Chief of Neurosurgery at BNI in 1983, and under his leadership, BNI has achieved tremendous growth. In 1994, Robert F. Spetzler was honored as the Honored Guest at the Congress of Neurological Surgeons (CNS) annual meeting (only one Honored Guest is selected at each CNS meeting). Spetzler was the youngest Honored Guest at that time and was re-elected as Honored Guest at the 2022 CNS meeting in San Francisco, the only two-time Honored Guest of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons in the history of neurosurgery in the United States. Spetzler was re-elected as a Honored Guest at the 2022 CNS Annual Meeting in San Francisco, and is the only person in the history of neurosurgery in the United States to have been named Honored Guest of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons twice.