Peter Q. Warinner, M.D. ’97
Shares his Neurological Expertise from Bedside to Ringside
From his first year at New York Medical College (NYMC), Peter Q. Warinner, M.D. ’97, knew he wanted to specialize in neurology. “As we were doing cadaver work and working with the brain and nervous system, I realized it was clearly the most complicated part of the human anatomy and physiology and offered the potential for a life’s work of pursuit and investigation,” Dr. Warinner says.
His neurological pursuits have led him far beyond his practice as medical director at CNS Multispecialty Clinic in Wellesley, Massachusetts. He has walked the hallowed halls of Congress to educate lawmakers on patient care and medical fraud, especially in the area of electrodiagnostic and neuromuscular medicine. His expertise on concussions and head trauma has put him at the forefront of the growing field of sports neurology and at the lectern at numerous national conferences. He creates legislation regarding athlete safety as chairman of the medical advisory board of the Massachusetts State Athletic Commission, and he even serves as a ringside physician at professional boxing and mixed martial-arts matches.
“It requires an intense level of triage that most neurologists don’t have exposure to,” Dr. Warinner says. “A lot of times I’m practicing emergency medicine and making a call in the ring whether a person can be stitched in a back room or needs to be transported immediately to avoid catastrophic consequences."
His varied pursuits have helped fill an alarming void that Warinner noticed when he first went into practice. “Most neurologists were uncomfortable with head trauma,” he explains. “Neurosurgeons wouldn’t handle concussions because there’s nothing to operate on, and neurologists wouldn’t handle them because it seemed like something neurosurgeons should do. Patients with concussions fell into an area where no one had the expertise or desire to manage them."
While concussions now receive far greater attention due to high-profile lawsuits filed by NFL players, Dr. Warinner posits this hasn’t translated into better care. “Suddenly every health care facility had a concussion expert,” he says. “The problem is there are only a few handful of people, like myself, who are actually experts. I’m on a mission to dispel a lot of information that is wrongly propagated regarding concussion management, even in respected academic centers.”
Dr. Warinner, an adjunct associate professor in microbiology and immunology at NYMC, returns every year to his alma mater to lecture on neurological infectious diseases and demonstrate spinal taps and cerebral spinal fluid analysis. He penned his first book on the subject while still a med student. “I have NYMC to thank for providing the fertile ground for me to grow my mind and turn my thoughts into a book,” Dr. Warinner says. He’s impressed by the caliber of students he encounters in his annual lectures. “I think students here get far superior training and exposure to education and clinical care than anywhere else,” he says. “It is with gratitude that I return, for my training at NYMC instilled in me a sense of striving to be an excellent clinician and to take care of not just the patient, but the community.”
Dr. Warinner is proud to note his book, The Art of American Health Care, was Amazon’s healthcare best seller in the month of October 2016 and the cover art is a drawing he did during his first year of medical school in the anatomy lab.