Dr. Godard de Ruiter

Biography

Godard de Ruiter has been working as a neurosurgeon since 2012. In 2003 he obtained his doctorate cum laude from Leiden University. In the same year he also graduated in Biomedical Sciences. In 2004 and 2005, he spent two years in the neurosurgery department at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester Minnesota, United States, where he contributed, among other things, to the development of a multichannel nerve tube as part of his PhD research. He completed his residency as a neurosurgeon partly at the Leiden University Medical Center and partly at the Haaglanden Medical Center (HMC), where he is currently working as well.

Godard is specialized in spinal and peripheral nerve surgery. He became a neurosurgeon because the nervous system, as the control of the musculoskeletal system, has always been of particular interest to him and the – often meticulous – surgery fascinated him. But he became a doctor because of the human side of his profession, he likes to guide people in their illness and always wants to make the most of it. Besides spinal fixations (spondylodeses), he also performs complex operations on peripheral nerves (including nerve reconstructions, rare compression syndromes and nerve tumors).