“I wanted to come home and use the skills I developed over two-plus decades to help people in my hometown,” he said. “I can’t believe it has worked out.”

Dr. Cobery practices at Charlton Memorial Hospital, where he treats patients by repairing damage caused by arthritis, spinal stenosis and other degenerative spine diseases. His specialty, however, is treating injuries sustained by trauma.

He said that the 7D Surgical Machine-vision Image Guided Surgery technology introduced at Charlton in October enables him to perform complex surgeries with smaller incisions, greater precision and less blood loss.

“It gets patients home sooner and allows them to rehab faster with less pain,” he said. “Some younger patients even get to go home the same day.”

The technology, which Southcoast Health surgeons have been using at St. Luke’s Hospital since 2019, also reduces the costs to patients and insurers. “It is a big step forward for the patients,” he said.

Dr. Cobery credits his parents with his career in medicine. He grew up in a tenement house with his mother working as a telephone operator and his father as a grocer. “I wouldn’t be here unless my parents had scrimped and saved for my education,” he said.

He attended Bishop Connolly High School and Worcester Polytechnic Institute, where he majored in nuclear engineering and then served on submarines in the U.S. Navy. He later enrolled in the Brown University School of Medicine with an interest in pediatrics, but his engineering background and fascination with the central nervous system drew him to neurosurgery.

His Naval service lasted 28 years, including a deployment in Afghanistan, where he performed surgeries just an hour’s drive from the front. He then brought his emergency trauma surgery skills to a Level I trauma center in Norfolk, VA, before coming to Southcoast Health.

Now he is devoted to caring for the people in the area where he grew up and where his mother still lives. He is proud that Southcoast enables him to deliver the highest standard of care to his patients

“If you have a spine or neurological problem, we have an excellent team that specializes in those treatments. You don’t have to go to Boston. You have it right here, close to home.”

For more information about Brain & Spine at Southcoast Health, visit Brain and Spine Services | Southcoast Health.