Petra M. Klinge, MD, PhD

Petra Klinge, MD is an internationally renowned neurosurgeon for the diagnosis and neurosurgical treatment of patients with cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) disorders, working on the unifying concept of cognitive problems-related pathology in hydrocephalus of aging and pediatric patients. Her practice also includes patients with associated developmental cerebrospinal fluid disorders, such as spina bifida, Chiari malformation, tethered cord, patients with connective tissue disorders and associated spinal fluid disorders including syringomyelia and occult tethered cord syndrome.

In collaboration with neuroradiology at Rhode Island Hospital, the Carney Institute for Brain Science at Brown University, and the department of biomedical engineering at The Warren Alpert School of Medicine at Brown University, she develops pioneering and novel clinical and in-vivo diagnostics and pathological studies to improve the management and validation of those conditions.

In addition, Dr. Klinge has been an established team member of the craniofacial team at Hasbro Children’s Hospital since 2009. She is an experienced skull base surgeon who specializes in surgical treatment of the brain.

Dr. Klinge has recently collaborated with the Conquer Chiari Research Center at the University of Akron, founded by the Department of Psychology and the Department of Biomedical Engineering, on the implications of aging in Chiari as well as identifying cognitive and imaging biomarkers to support the biodynamic concept of the failure of cerebrospinal fluid regulation at the base of the skull in adult Chiari malformation. Her research has focused on the failure of “myodural bridges” and defunct collagen that supports the aspects of CSF circulatory failure at the base of the skull in various conditions, including Chiari associated with connective tissue disease, and she works on the novel concept of a spinal cord motion disorder that might explain and support occult neurosurgical pathologies associated with impaired CSF regulation and tethering of the spinal cord and brain stem.

She is currently appointed by the National Academy of Sciences to serve in a committee to establish disability criteria for the neurological conditions in patients with Ehlers-Danlos-Syndrome and Marfan Syndrome. 

Dr. Klinge is a professor of neurosurgery at The Warren Alpert School of Medicine at Brown University. Prior to this, she was professor of neurosurgery at the Medical School Hannover, Germany. She received her medical degree at the University of Kiel in 1993 and completed her neurosurgical residency at Hannover Medical School in Germany in 2002. She was senior associate professor of neurosurgery at the International Neuroscience Institute in Hannover, Germany, where she studied with Professor M. Samii, a founder of modern skull base surgery.

Dr. Klinge is an active member of the American Association of Neurosurgeons and the Congress of Neurological Surgeons. She is editor in chief of the Elsevier journal Interdisciplinary Neurosurgery: Advanced Techniques and Case Management (INAT) and associate editor of Clinical Neurology and Neurosurgery (CNN). She also serves as reviewer for international scientific journals including Neurosurgery, Journal of Neurosurgery, Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry, and others. She is past president of the International Society for Hydrocephalus and CSF disorders.

Her scientific publications are listed by the US National Library of Medicine.