Guy Clifton, M.D.

Guy Clifton, M.D., neurosurgeon and clinical investigator, joined the University of Texas-Houston Medical School faculty as head of neurosurgery in 1990. He received a B.S. from Texas A&M University in 1971 and an M.D. from the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) at Galveston with high honors in 1975.

Dr. Clifton completed a surgery residency at the University of Minnesota Hospital in Minneapolis and one in neurosurgery at UTMB in 1980. He then served on the Baylor College of Medicine, Department of Neurosurgery, faculty until 1984. He left Baylor to continue his work in Richmond, Virginia, where he was Professor of Neurosurgery at the Medical College of Virginia and Chief of the Neurosurgery Service at the Hunter Holmes McGuire Veterans Administration Medical Center.

He is the founding Chairman of the Department of Neurosurgery at the University of Texas Medical School at Houston and served in that capacity until 2004. During that time, he also served as Chief of the Neurosurgery Service at Memorial Hermann Hospital. He holds the Runnells Distinguished Chair in Neurosurgery at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. The recipient of a number of research grants, he is currently principal investigator for a $15.6 million multicenter randomized study designed to test moderate systemic cooling as a treatment for acute, severe brain injury.

Dr. Clifton is founder and Chairman of Save Our ERs, a coalition of Houston business and health professionals dedicated to solving the emergency care crisis in Texas. Save Our ERs took a statewide leadership role in 2003 in the passage of legislation to fund uninsured trauma care in the state. He has served as Chairman of the Houston-Galveston Area Council’s Emergency/Trauma Care Policy Council, which seeks to coordinate provision of emergency services in the 13 counties of the Houston metropolitan area so that timely emergency services are available to its residents.