Chris Kager and his wife Stephanie met during their undergraduate days at the University of Pennsylvania. They both earned medical degrees in Philadelphia, he at Penn’s School of Medicine, she at Temple University School of Medicine. Chris went on to specialize in neurosurgery, completing his Neurosurgery Residency at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center. Stephanie pursued pediatrics, and completed her training at the Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center.
Then it was on to Cleveland, where Dr. Kager completed his Fellowship in Complex Spinal Surgery at The Cleveland Clinic. When the time came to decide where to work and live, the couple sought an area with a strong record in health care delivery and one where they could raise their young family in an environment that suited their love of sports and community. Lancaster County, Pennsylvania fit the bill.
Today they have six children who are very active in sports, including lacrosse, tennis, baseball, football and equestrian. Both parents are avid tennis players and runners. They have completed the Ocean Drive Marathon at the Jersey Shore, and the Chicago Marathon twice. Stephanie also finished the Marine Corps Marathon in Washington D.C. and the 50-mile JFK Ultra-Marathon in Hagerstown, MD in 2007. Chris coaches youth football and youth lacrosse in Manheim Township and is actively involved in multiple tennis leagues.
Since 2001, Dr. Chris Kager has been performing routine and complex spinal surgeries in his practice at Lancaster NeuroScience & Spine Associates. The county’s growing population makes for a wide range of neurosurgical cases, bringing him the type of increasingly complex procedures for which he trained. Currently he is Chief of Neurosurgery at Lancaster Regional Medical Center, and has performed more than 3,000 procedures at Lancaster General, Lancaster Regional, and Ephrata Hospital.
Dr. Kager says that with experience comes a more total view of the patient. “Instead of focusing on a specific spine problem, you tend to take a more global view -- how it imp acts their life, their work, and their family,” he explained. As one who is very integrated with the community, he often takes care of people with whom he’s worked professionally or met through athletic activities. “Maybe one of my kids plays with one of their kids, and there is a comfort level there,” he said. His firsthand knowledge of sports is assuring to teachers, trainers, athletes and parents who are dealing with pain or injury.
Whatever the distress or age of his patients, Dr. Kager brings a physics-oriented approach to diagnosis and treatment that he learned during his Fellowship at The Cleveland Clinic. “It’s called biomechanics,” he explained. “It looks at forces and stresses on the spine in a pragmatic way.”
"The time commitment to being a surgeon is pretty significant," Dr. Kager says, " and you always wish for a little more free time." He devotes some of that scarce free time to teaching in Lancaster General’s education programs and frequently addresses the nursing staff on neurosurgery topics. He’s often sought after for wider audiences, as he was in April, 2009, as a key speaker at Penn State Hershey’s NeuroScience Conference, presenting “Innovations in Spinal Surgery” to a large regional conference of neuroscience nurses.
Dr. Kager also volunteers his time as Medical Director of Think First® Lancaster, a satellite of the national head and spine injury prevention organization for children. He credits nurses Carol Noll, Genie Hostetter, Brendan Wood and Jennifer Cutler of Lancaster General Hospital's neurosurgical unit for making it happen. Together they educate kids on safe behavior like wearing helmets and avoiding risky behavior. “We talked to a record number of kids last year, and we'll try to get to do more this year,” said Dr. Kager. “With my wife being a pediatrician, and me a neurosurgeon, it's a natural choice for us.”
