At Neura Health, we offer expert neurological care for all our patients, supporting them throughout their health journey. We're happy to introduce Dr. Mark Fehr, MD. Dr. Fehr is a board-certified neurologist with a medical degree from Tufts University School of Medicine. With subspecialty training in epilepsy, headache disorders, and clinical neurophysiology, Dr. Fehr is here to help you better understand and take control of your neurological health and well-being.

Hi, my name is Mark Fehr. I'm a neurologist here at Neura Health. I was born and raised in New York to parents from the Midwest. 

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What is your professional background?

I treat concussion and traumatic brain injury, tremor, stroke, and have subspecialty training in the treatment of epilepsy. I have been practicing as a neurologist since 2006, 2007, when I started my residency. I have been drawn to medicine for reasons related to scientific interest and interest in providing aid to people who otherwise may not get it. 

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What is your special interest within your specific field?

My specialty interest and specialty training are in epilepsy and treating people who have epileptic events and evaluating them for diagnosis and treatment. 

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What’s your approach to treating patients?

People are usually, in my experience, looking for somebody who will take stock of their story, and do their best to try to make sure that they get a good evaluation so that they can feel better from whatever the illness may be. 

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What is your POV on patient-first care?

I've had patients say, you're the first doctor who's taken the time to listen to me. had patients say, most doctors will spend two minutes in the room or five minutes in the room, and you've listened to my story. And I feel that in neurology specifically, listening to a person's story and trying to get as much details as you can out of that makes a big difference in determining the correct next course of action. think neurologists are pretty good at listening to details of a person's issues and being able to sort out what to do next from a medical perspective based upon listening to their story. 

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What’s the biggest misunderstanding patients have about recovery after a concussion or TBI?

In my experience, I've seen a lot of folks who have had car accidents or other head injuries resulting in concussion that think many of them, including many medical professionals, think that it's an easy recovery and takes a short period of time. And oftentimes, people can take much longer to feel fully back to normal. And that can be very frustrating. 

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Beyond controlling seizures, what factors make the biggest difference in a patient’s quality of life?

I think that a very common reason for people to have seizures, especially if they've been previously diagnosed with seizures, is missing medications or not taking them correctly. And commonly that's because of some kind of an insurance or medication problem, side effects, or costs, or whatever the case may be, and being able to make sure that those different aspects of taking medications are being addressed can be very important in keeping a person from having more spells. And sometimes that's overlooked. So medication side effects, making sure you're taking the medication, not causing any problems, I think is one of the common reasons why people relapse, so to speak. 

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What aspects of stroke recovery tend to be overlooked once the immediate crisis has passed?

Depending on how long we define an immediate crisis, many things tend to be overlooked. One of them, most commonly, is the length of time that it takes for the brain to recover from an injury. A lot of people understandably will get frustrated and or anxious to get back to normal as quickly as possible. But unfortunately, the brain doesn't work like that. And it can take a very long time to feel as close to normal as possible. 

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How do you approach patients who have persistent neurological symptoms but no clear diagnosis yet?

When I am talking to somebody who has a set of symptoms without a clear cause or diagnosis, I think there are a lot of factors that go into my evaluation. The first obviously is taking a good hard look and listen at the person and trying to get a sense of their timeline and what happened when. Sometimes that can lead to a very long discussion without much of a physical exam or testing initially so that you can really get a sense about how this progressed and over what period of time. 

After that, it's a matter of seeing what tests have already been done and seeing how you can fit those symptoms into a particular syndrome. As a neurologist, we often get symptoms which other doctors or other medical professionals have trouble diagnosing. And so sometimes it requires us to look into other aspects of the body as well to see if any of those make sense as a cause for the patient's symptoms. Sometimes that requires testing and sometimes it requires multiple visits to get a sense about what makes the most likely diagnostic answer, and then moving from there.

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Do you have a chronic condition or does someone close to you have a chronic condition?

I have multiple family members who have experienced various neurologic issues and have had to interact with the medical system and neurology in particular for many years. So I know how challenging that can be, as well as family members who have had strokes, which shown me how important it is that the people that you're seeing are treating you like a person and listening to what you have to say. 

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