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Dr. Alfred O. Bonati is the Chairman and Chief Orthopedic Surgeon at The Bonati Spine Institute. Dr. Bonati is a graduate of the University of Seville and the Bowman Gray Medical School and completed internships and residencies at Cook County Hospital in Chicago, the University of Alabama, and Georgetown University.

Alfred O. Bonati, M.D. founded the Gulf Coast Orthopedic Center for Special Surgery of Joint Disease to perform arthroscopic surgery on the hips, knees, shoulders and wrists. He was an early advocate of arthroscopic surgery because he saw that the scarring was minimal, it shortened the patient’s recovery time, and could be performed on an outpatient basis without the need for general anesthesia.

 Dr. Bonati realized the same benefits could be applied to spine surgery. As a result, he turned his focus to arthroscopic surgery to correct problems in the spinal column. During this time he developed advanced instrumentation and techniques for spine surgery. He subsequently obtained 7 patents from the United States Patent and Trademark Office for his methods and instruments. The Bonati Spine Institute was the first surgical center to obtain FDA approval for the use of Holmium: YAG Laser in spine surgery.

The surgical techniques that Dr. Bonati developed are today called The Bonati Spine Procedures. Prior to these procedures, the only option was “open” spine surgery. Because of the high failure rate of traditional surgery, it was often recommended that patients avoid spine surgery altogether, and either live with the pain or temporarily mask it with narcotics. Often patients became dependent on these pain medications.