Looking at Dr. Donald Hilton’s office walls, one immediately gets a sense of the room’s inhabitant. Family, friends and work are all depicted in the photos and citations adorning every available space.
Dr. Hilton is a remarkable man and an even more extraordinary doctor. Other neurosurgeons in the field value his expertise and forward–thinking ideas. He credits Dr. Kevin Foley with lighting the fires of ingenuity in his specialty of neurosurgery. “Dr. Foley was the leader in the field of minimally invasive spine surgery. He was a true visionary and I was fortunate enough to work with him.” Dr. Foley invented procedures and made them more accessible to neurosurgeons.
Dr. Hilton believes his own contribution is to take some of these revolutionary ideas and generalize them so more surgeons can use them. A direct result of this is his participation in the creation of the MEtRx® system. “Back surgery has come a long way since the days of major incisions and days or weeks of bed rest, and part of that is this system that I was fortunate enough to help develop.” Specialized instruments allow a surgeon to work on fixing stenosis of the spine by pushing the muscles and nerves aside without damaging them. once they are pushed aside, the surgeon is able to access the damaged discs and remove the herniated pieces. “The beauty of this system,” Dr. Hilton explains, “is that the patient is almost always able to return home the same day.” Minimal invasion has enabled a higher success rate than with more traditional back surgeries. Dr. Hilton himself has performed almost 3,000 surgeries using the MEtRx® system and has a success rate of between 90% and 95%, which is almost unprecedented in this field. Dr. Hilton makes his achievements and his surgeries sound almost mundane, but looking at his life, one quickly realizes there is nothing mundane about him.
When Dr. Hilton is not in his office seeing patients, or performing surgeries, he is generally lecturing or teaching all over the world, from Texas to Vietnam. His peers and professional associations recognize him as an expert on minimally invasive spine surgeries. He has held several offices in professional associations, including Secretary of the Texas Association of Neurological Surgeons from 2004–2006. He is currently a clinical associate Professor with the department of Neurosurgery at the University of Texas Health Science Center. He has also been cited in the 'Best Doctors in America’ every year since 2005, including 2008. 'S.A. Scene’ listed him in the best doctors section in 2006–07 and 2007–08.
Working in the field of medicine runs in the family, although Dr. Hilton is the first neurosurgeon. “My father was an OB/GYN, and for a long time I thought I would follow in his footsteps. But I was 'hooked’ for life when I watched a doctor perform brain surgery, and clip an aneurysm. I remember saying to the surgeon that I was hooked and now wanted to be a neurosurgeon too. The surgeon looked at his partner and said, 'Oh boy – he’s caught the disease!’” He may joke about it now, but Dr. Hilton admits that the training was brutal, and there were times when he’d look at the number of years he would need to train and just wonder how he’d make it through. “But you do,” he says.
Church plays an important role in Dr. Hilton’s life as well. Surprisingly, this Texas–born native is fluent in Afrikaans, the second official language of South Africa, and spoken by only a few million people around the world. Dr. Hilton had taken a mission trip there, and learned the language, and still speaks it fluently to this day. “It wasn’t too hard to learn,” he laughs, “as long you remember to say the g’s correctly and place the verb at the end of the sentence!” A love for Africa was spawned with the trip and he has returned several times since then, to visit friends and to take his family on safari. He has also traveled with his family to Israel and Europe.
Dr. Hilton has recently written a manuscript on changes in the brain occurring with both natural and drug addictions, intended to be used in addiction recovery. This is in addition to the material he writes professionally and that has been published in medical journals all over the world.
When he is not at work, with his family, or at church, you can find Dr. Hilton on the basketball court or training for marathons. “I am not too fond of traditional workouts,” he confesses, “so I often go to the basketball courts by myself and shoot hoops. I have made 41 out of 50 two–pointers. I’m very pleased with that number!”
Of his five children, only one has shown an interest in following in his father’s footsteps, and that is 19–year old, Don. “Susanna, my oldest daughter, is now married and we are the proud grandparents of Jacob. My other three daughters (Caroline, Elizabeth and Rebecca) are not interested in medicine, yet.”
Dr. Hilton finishes up the interview as he prepares to catch a plane to a national conference, where his son Don plans on meeting him. “I might even let him do some of the demo surgery (on cadavers, not living humans) if it works out,” he chuckles. He sets aside his planner, puts on his suit coat and prepares to leave to catch his plane. He is a busy man with many responsibilities to be sure, but one who loves every minute of his life.
One last look at his office is a reminder of just how full his life is, and perhaps a nudge to the rest of us that we are indeed meeting a great man, and doctor.
