Chris

Dr. Honey is Professor and Head of the Division of Neurosurgery at the University of British Columbia.  He obtained his medical degree from the University of Toronto and his doctoral degree from Oxford University as a Canadian Rhodes Scholar. He completed his Royal College training in neurosurgery in Vancouver in 1995 and became a diplomat of the American Board of Neurological Surgeons in 2000. He has completed an additional year of training at Harvard Medical School and is a Scholar in Surgical Leadership.

His research is focused on the treatment of movement disorders and pain. He headed the world’s first trial of DBS for spasmodic dysphonia and published the results in 2021. He was the first physician to recognize and successfully treat hemi-laryngopharyngeal spasm (HELPS syndrome) in 2014. He discovered and successfully treated the first person in the world with VANCOUVER syndrome in 2019. He has made fundamental changes to the understanding of human pain pathways.

Dr. Honey was elected the President of the Canadian Neuromodulation Society (2016-2019) and hosted the annual national meetings in Whistler (2018) and Iqaluit (2019). The Iqaluit meeting brought attention to the fact that neuromodulation was underutilized in the Canadian North and set up referral patterns for patients in Nunavut, Northwest Territories, and Yukon. Dr. Honey has served as the President of the British Columbia Section of Neurosurgeons (2016-2019).

In 2018, Dr. Honey was elected President of the World Neurosurgical Federation for Cranial Nerve Disorders. This group studies conditions such as Trigeminal Neuralgia, Hemifacial Spasm, Glossopharyngeal Neuralgia and the newly described Hemi-Laryngopharyngeal Spasm (HeLPS) and has a major interest in Microvascular Decompression (MVD) neurosurgery. Dr. Honey hosted the 3rd World Congress of this Society in Vancouver in 2022. In 2024, Dr. Honey hosted the 16th World Congress of the International Neuromodulation Society in Vancouver.

Dr Honey continues to work with the Canadian Football League Players Association and is their Neurological Director.

Dr. Honey has been invited to lecture at Universities and Meetings around the world (over 200 presentations on 6 continents). He has a strong commitment to teaching and has had the pleasure to train 25 neurosurgeons from around the world during their one-year fellowship with him in Vancouver. He has provided pro bono, humanitarian surgical care in Liberia (performing the first successful brain tumor removal, the first spine operation, and the first pediatric shunt) and in Ghana. He has been invited to operate in China, Indonesia, and performed the first DBS in Kuwait.

Dr. Honey’s book, The Tenth Nerve, published by Penguin Random House Canada, is now available at Indigo, local bookstores and drchrishoney.com.

It is an homage to seven patients who taught him more about medicine than an lecture or textbook.