Mark
Dougherty
MD

University of Iowa Physicians
Neurosurgeon
Languages
English, Spanish
Assistant Professor of Neurosurgery
  • Neurosurgery
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For Neurosurgery related requests:
1-319-356-2237
For all other requests:
1-800-777-8442

Locations

Medical Center University
200 Hawkins Drive
Iowa City, IA 52242
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Clinical expertise

Acoustic neuroma (vestibular schwannoma)
Brain Cancer
Brain Surgery
LITT (Laser interstitial Thermal Therapy)
Pituitary Gland and Skull Base Surgery
Brain tumors
Malignancy resection
Meningiomas
Minimally invasive surgery
Neuroendoscopy
Pituitary tumors
Skull base surgery

About Mark Dougherty

My favorite thing about my job is helping people go through one of the biggest events of their lives—brain surgery—and then watching them recover and return to their lives, often so seamlessly that you can’t even tell they had surgery.

I like working with patients because, especially in a surgical specialty, we can so often directly see the impact of our treatments. For example, brain tumors such as meningiomas can take away one's ability to talk, walk, or take care of oneself. Surgery can't always fix this, but when it can, it's incredibly rewarding.

My inspiration to practice medicine is twofold. Firstly, I like addressing fixable problems. We can't cure every neurological disease with surgery, but there is also so much we can do nowadays. Secondly, I love working on the brain and nervous system because every day is a learning experience: even though our brains are what make each of us the person we are, there is still so much we don’t understand.

I joined UI because of the collective drive to keep getting better at what we do—whether that’s in the research that’s done to improve our understanding of disease biology, training the next generation of physicians and surgeons to do even greater things than we can do today, or providing the best experience possible for patients who are often going through one of the toughest events of their life.
- Mark Dougherty

Training and Education

Memberships

North American Skull Base Society

Congress of Neurological Surgeons

American Association of Neurological Surgeons

Society for Neuro-Oncology

Degrees

MD, University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine, Chicago, Illinois

BS, Biology, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina

Residencies

Neurosurgery, UI Health Care, Iowa City, Iowa

Fellowships

Skull Base Surgery, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland

Skull Base Surgery, King's College Hospital in London, United Kingdom