Dr David Johnson

Dr David Johnson is an Australian trained Brain and Spinal Neurosurgeon with a particular clinical interest in Comprehensive Spine Pain Management.

He cofounded the Sunshine Spine Multidisciplinary Clinic, Neurostimulation Pain Surgery Clinic and in 2015 the first of now three Functional Movement Training Centres in Queensland that deliver the NeuroHAB Movement Therapy Program for low back pain offering the unique and imperative combined services of Spine Surgery, Pain Surgery, Musculoskeletal and Pain Medicine, Movement Therapy and Foundational Dietary Support. Integral to Dr Johnson’s spine pain practice is the fundamental incorporation of Movement Therapy for patients suffering from the ubiquitous symptoms of low back pain. Through the affiliation of City To Coast Neurosurgery and the Functional Movement Training Centres, Dr Johnson is pioneering research into the high prevalence of Movement Dysfunction in the community and how this links to the broader substrate of lumbar degeneration and more importantly the transformation and/or causation of symptomatic spinal degeneration. Central to understanding the distinctive approach Dr Johnson employs, is the awareness that Spine Pain and Back Pain is not a diagnosis, but merely is the symptom of the ineffectively treated primary disease of Movement Deficiency Related Low Back Pain (MDrLBP), and therefore an imperative tandem approach, adopting conventional surgical and non surgical therapies of Pain Symptom Management must be coupled with addressing the root cause of the spinal disease, which ultimately begins as movement dysfunction, propagated by modern industrialized lifestyles.

Along with general and acute Cranial Neurosurgery, Dr Johnson’s surgical interests are in complex and minimally invasive Spinal Surgery and latest technology spinal cord and peripheral nerve neuro-stimulation techniques which also have application for neck pain, facial pain and pelvic pain. Dr Johnson has embraced keyhole advances in Lateral approach spine surgery of the spine and the sacro-iliac joint which is commonly overlooked and typically represents a challenging back pain cohort, responding poorly to physical therapy and pain management. Dr Johnson has worked extensively in Queensland Public Tertiary Hospitals for nearly 20 years. He sits on Medical Advisory Committees for the Health Ombudsmen and advises the Australian Prosthetics Device Committee.