AMSTERDAM /// wednesDAY, 30 May 2012 /// Spineweek2012.com /// ISSUE 3
EuroSpine President Jean Charles LeHuec and the Travel Grant Winners 2012
Interview with Tim Pigott
Introducing our EuroSpine Travel Grant Group Encouraging research in the field of spinal disorders is one of EuroSpine‘s main aim. Therefore the society not only awards prizes but also offers a great possibility for colleagues all over the world to share their studies and to attend the annual meeting.
Local Host of the EuroSpine 2013 in Liverpool Why should some someone become a EuroSpine member? Being a member of the EuroSpine Society is both excellent in terms of continuing professional education, in terms of the ability to network with colleagues, to learn about new developments, learn about scientific research – in particular the EuroSpine Lunch Symposia are very educational and good for interactions. From my perspective it is vital for my practice to be a member of EuroSpine. What makes EuroSpine unique? EuroSpine brings together so many people from different nations – there is a huge international audience and faculty. You get to know a lot about different practices all around the world – it is really interesting to learn from other peoples‘ practice. Why is it important to attend the annual meetings?
If you don‘t go to the meetings, you will not be able to learn or to have the opportunity to network with your colleagues. That is how you can keep ahead of new developments both in the medical field and in the political field in spine. There are lots of changes in the field of spine surgery at the moment, e.g. people are talking about the specialist recognition for spine surgeons, which would be a major step. You need to be at the meetings to understand what is going on. You are the Local Host for the conference in Liverpool next year. What is special about the next meeting? Liverpool is a very compact town, the exhibition center and arena is on the waterfront right within the town center, so everything is very closely located. There is no need for public transport, you can walk everywhere and even all the hotels are within walking distance. The program committee will be putting together a very interesting program. Liverpool has also excellent flight connections and train connections from London.
Out of the many applications, five outstanding studies were elected and will be presented at this year‘s Spineweek. In order to receive the EuroSpine Travel Grant it is not necessary to be an actual member but it is a great opportunity to become one. Satoshi Kato At the Spineweek 2012, Satoshi Kato, of Kanazawa University School of Medicine in Japan, is one of the lucky EuroSpine Travel Grant winners. He will present his study within two quick-fire sessions. The first presentation “How much can Preoperative Embolization Decrease Blood Loss during Palliative Surgery for Spinal Metastasis” already took place on Monday and now Dr. Kato, who specializes on spine tumor research, is eagerly preparing for his second appearance on Thursday, concerning the effects of spinal shortening in reconstruction. His focus on spinal metastasis and enjoyed various sessions about this topic that also included highly stimulating discussions. Lazary Áron Orthopedic resident Lazary Áron from the National Center for Spinal Disorders in Budapest, Hungary, is another proud EuroSpine Travel Grants holder who is fond to present his study at this year’s Spineweek. He presents
two papers this year: The first is about the early prevention of low back pain, where he performed a school-based prevention program over the last 3 years. In the study he worked with 1000 school children aged between 7 and 12. The main aim was to ensure a healthy spine by constantly training children with accurate exercises at school. The second paper is a clinical one – where he compared the results of questionnaires, which were filled out by patients after undergoing lumbar stabilization surgery. An interesting outcome was that the preoperative level of depression was very important in combination with the post-operative outcome. In the bad-outcome-group the pre-operative depression was significantly higher. Tim Hammett Tim Hammett, spine research fellow of the Centre for Spinal Studies and Surgery at the Queens Medical Centre in Nottingham, is presenting his paper on the Survival of Intrathecal Baclofen Pumps in Neuromuscular Scoliosis Surgery. The subject area is rather small and focuses on patients suffering cerebral palsy. While the treatment with Intrathecal Baclofen can improve the patients‘ condition, the risk of developing scoliosis among those patients is very high. So what Dr. Hammett looked at was what exactly happened to the Intrathecal Baclofen pump if he operated on patients who have had one of these pumps implanted. The main message to the surgeons is that if one does operate on one of these patients, the pump is going to
break – therefore it is crucial to make rearrangements for how the pump is going to be replaced. Wang Miao Wang Miao is presenting his PhD project from Aarhus University Hospital in Denmark, called “Survival Analysis of the Breast Cancer Subtypes in Spinal Metastases”. This very interesting topic is rather new, since nobody focused on the subgroups of breast cancer before. Research in this area is crucial and can also change the surgical strategy in the future. He came here to present his latest study about breast cancer subtypes in Spinal Metastases, which is very interesting and can change the surgical strategy in the future. Besides his presentation his main focus at the Spineweek was to discuss his paper with colleagues and surgeons in order to learn from each other and to share the knowledge. So Kato Dr. Kato is a spine surgeon at the Tokyo Metropolitan Komagome Hospital in Japan, which specializes on cancer patients only, and presents his interesting study of „Conservative Treatment for Paralytic Spinal Cord Compression by Metastatic Prostate Cancer“. Briefly the take-home message of his paper is that there are no big indications of surgery for newly diagnosed prostate cancer, because newly diagnosed prostate cancer are often hormone dependent and hormonal therapies are highly effective in these cases. Therefore he does not usually perform surgery on these patients.