A national rollout of the National Consultant Information Programme (NCIP) portal is under way to all consultant spinal surgeons in England, enabling them to review their individual outcomes data to improve clinical quality and patient safety. Around 400 consultant spinal surgeons have now been registered on the portal, gaining access to around 30 dashboards of high-quality, specialty-specific data. Procedures include high volume procedures such as posterior lumbar discectomy and decompression, and specialist surgical conditions such as intradural intramedullary tumour excision. How NCIP can s ..read more

Amy Shore is a board-certified anesthesiologist and Medical Director at the DISC Surgery Center in Marina del Rey. With nearly two decades of experience, she specializes in spine and orthopaedic anaesthesia. Dr. Shore is particularly skilled in treating perioperative pain and postoperative nausea and vomiting through the use of customized treatment plans tailored to each patient. Journal of Anaesthesia Practice ask the questions   JAP: What led you to choose anesthesiology as a career, particularly focusing on spinal and orthopaedic anaesthesia? AS: Anesthesiology remains one of the ..read more

During the 31st International Meeting on Advanced Spine Techniques (IMAST), the Scoliosis Research Society (SRS) announced the winners of the Thomas E. Whitecloud Awards  given to the best basic science/translational and best clinical papers. This year’s winner for best basic science/translational research paper: Paper #7- Pseudotime Analysis and Mrna-Lncrna-Mirna Network Co-Analysis Reveals Abnormal Bone Marrow Niche Leads to Reduced Osteogenesis and Chondrogenesis of Bone Marrow Mesenchymal Stem Cells in Adolescent Idiopathic Scoliosis Patients. This y ..read more

In a study published in Advanced Materials, researchers Pietro Veglianese, Valeria Veneruso and Emilia Petillo from Istituto di Ricerche Farmacologiche Mario Negri IRCCS in collaboration with Filippo Rossi of the Politecnico di Milano have demonstrated that an innovative nanovector (nanogel), which they developed, is able to deliver anti-inflammatory drugs in a targeted manner into glial cells actively involved in the evolution of spinal cord injury, a condition that leads to paraplegia or quadriplegia. Treatments currently available to modulate the infl ..read more

Cromwell Hospital has become the first hospital in the UK and Europe to use the Apple Vision Pro, a spatial computing device, as a surgical logistics and organisational tool. Introduced to the hospital by eXeX, a leader in artificial intelligence and spatial computing for surgical organisation and workflow optimisation, surgeons Mr Fady Sedra and Mr Syed Aftab, part of the Complex Spine group who operate out of Cromwell Hospital, used the technology to successfully perform two microsurgical spine procedures. Cromwell Hospital and eXeX partnered in 2023 to introduce AI and Spatia ..read more

Top neurosurgeons at The Walton Centre have achieved the incredible milestone of 100 complex spinal operations using innovative robotic surgery. The surgical team passed the 100-mark this week, completing a spinal fusion, one of the procedures to use the technology at the specialist Trust. The groundbreaking surgical robotic navigation system is one of the first of its kind to be used in the NHS, which the team began to use in October 2022. It allows surgeons to facilitate placement of spinal screws and interbody cages to an incredibly high level of precision. This enables patients to spend le ..read more

EduWeek, short for Education Week, is the society’s flagship educational event. Held in late June or early July, EduWeek offers basic and advanced surgical spine courses in a dedicated location, to foster lifelong learning and promote the latest surgical spine care education. EduWeek is a hybrid educational event that adopts a blended learning approach. It consists of two components: PART 1: Online self-paced e-learning (asynchronous) Participants acquire knowledge through the online component, consisting of recorded video lectures and graded quizzes to test the content covered. PART ..read more

George Uglow on the inflationary uplifts you may need to check Many doctors are missing out on the inflationary increase due on their NHS pension. This is something we check when assessing the pensions statements of new clients and we have seen many examples where the standard revaluation figure is wrong. Doctors contributing to the 2015 NHS pension scheme (who have not had a break in pensionable service of 5 years of more) should see their pension revalued every year with inflation. This is at the CPI rate of inflation (consumer price index) plus 1.5%. However, many are not receiving their ri ..read more

The Scoliosis Research Society (SRS) has opened its 2024 Research Grant and Awards cycle, with two new opportunities. First in the Grant opportunities, the Society introduced the 2024 Named Research Grant which is designed to support innovative research in the field of growth modulation of the spine and/or vertebral body tethering (VBT). The total grant award of up to $50,000 may be requested for up-to-two years. Applicants do not need to be members of the SRS but do need to have at least one SRS member as a co-investigator. In addition, applications for Resident/Fellow Grants and Ex ..read more

Synergy Spine Solutions, a medical device developer focused on artificial cervical disc replacement, announced recently that it has closed on a significant equity financing of $30 million. The Series A financing was led by a new institutional investor, Amzak Health, and joined by other investors. The proceeds will be used to complete enrolment of Synergy’s US IDE 2-level clinical trial, continue patient follow-up on both the 1-level and 2-level clinical trials, submit anticipated Pre-Market Approval applications to the FDA, as well as to support continued commercialization in markets outside t ..read more