Extremely prolific, he has published more than 580 articles and 180 book chapters and has co-edited multiple neurosurgical textbooks, including The Color Atlas of Microneurosurgery (2000).

Spetzler was born in Stierhöfstetten (Oberscheinfeld, near Würzburg) in Germany to where his parents had been evacuated due to the Second World War.

[citation needed] Spetzler played a dominant role in the use of the standstill operation in treating large or dangerous cerebral aneurysms.

[4] One notable application of this method occurred in 1991 when Spetzler successfully removed a large aneurysm in a 35-year-old American woman named Pam Reynolds.

Despite being clinically dead and under intense monitoring and medical observation whilst the procedure was ongoing, Reynolds claimed to have had a profound near-death experience in which she was able to accurately recall the sequence of events within the operating theater, the surgical instruments used, and the conversations that had taken place.